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EULOGIES 



ON 



GULIAN C. VERPLANCK. 



"The Century." 



PKOCEEDESTGS 



/ 

CENTURY ASSOCIATION 



IN HONOR OF THE MEMORY OF 



GULIAN C. VERPLANCK. 



APRIL 9, 1870. 




NEW YORK: 
D. APPLETON & COMPANY 

90, 92 & 94 GRAND STREET. 
1870. 



< 'kntiky Ro 
Saturday, Jj/ril 9, 1870. 

A Bpecial meeting of The Century was held this evening, in honor 
of the memory of Qoxiah C. Vxrplakos, the President, Mr. Bryant, 
taking the chair. 

Addresses, eloquently and sympathetically illustrating his charac- 

. his attainments, hi- public services, and his social excellences, 

were pronounced by Mr. Bryant, Chief-Justice Daly, the Reverend Dr. 

Bellows, the Reverend Dr. Vinton, the Reverend Dr. Eaight, Mr. 

ry I >->rr, and Mr. John Gourlie. 

The meeting listened with deep attention to these tributes of re- 
spect and affection to their late distinguished associate and friend ; 
and npon their conclusion, "ii the motion of Judge Van Vorst, it was 
onauimoualy resolved — 

That the esteem <>f The Century for the late Gulian C. Verplanck, 
and their Borrow for his Loss, have found worthy expression in the ad- 
■ which they have listened ; that a copy of those addresses 
be requested for publication and distribution among the member-; 
and that the Secretary and Treasurer be charged with the arrange- 
ments for such publication. 

An extract from the minutes: 

A. K. Macdoxough, Secretary. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



l BIEF-JU8TICE CHARLES P. DALY, 



REMARKS 



MR. JOHN II. GOURLIE, MR. HENRY C. DORR, REV. HENRY W 
BELLOWS, D. D., AND REV. FRANCIS VINTON, D. D. 



THE i;iim;i:.\1'hical addi!I->* 



CHIKK-JUSTICE DALT 



To Mr. Verplanck must be accorded the metropoli- 
tan honor of having been tin* most distinguished de- 

ndant of the men who nearly two centuries and a 
half ago founded the city of New York. If may be 
doubted If there be any family now extant in the city, 
with the single exception of the Browers, who can 
trace their connection with its early history as far 
back as the one of which he, by direct chain of lin- 
eal descent, was at the time of his death the gifted 
head. Tiny were, as their Dame denotes, of that 
old Batavian stock, half Flemish and half Dutch, of 
Brabant and Zealand — a race to which he was not 
merely allied by blood, but of which he was a repre- 



8 

sentative type, for he resembled them in his persona] 
appearance, and he had their characteristic abilities and 
virtues; their probity, frugality, and firmness; their 
independence of mind, their tolerant spirit, their ca- 
pacity for public affairs, and their love of letters. 

A book published in Amsterdam, in 1651 (" Be- 
8ckryvmg7w Van Virginia? etc.), contains the earliest 
pictorial representation of the little dorp or village 
which lias since become the commercial metropolis of 
America. This print represents a fort at the southern 
• xtremity of the island of New York, close to the 
water's edge, with a few bouses sparsely scattered to 
the east and west of it, the roofs of some of which, from 
the inequality of the ground, are alone visible, and tow- 
ering above all, that indispensable and uniformly prom- 
inent object in a Dutch village, a windmill. Before 
the drawing for this print was made, or, to express it 
more definitely, in 1630, four years after the purchase 
of the island from the Indians, when the entire popula- 
tion, men, women, and children, did not exceed three 
hundred souls, Abraham Isaacson Ver Planck, or, as he 
was sometimes called, Planck, was married to Maria, 
daughter ot Jan Vigne, one of the proprietors of the 
land sin rounding "The Collect," or Great Fresh-water 
Pond, which existed up to the early part of the present 
century, on the space now bounded by Broadway, 



Grand, Chatham, and Reade Streets. As he was the 
first immigrant and common ancestor, it may not be 
inappropriate upon an occasion like this to put together 
from our early Dutch records what has been preserved 
respecting him. In the year of his marriage, a director 
of the Amsterdam Company, named Pauw, obtained a 
patent tor a large tract of land, opposite the little set- 
tlement, upon the western bank of the Hudson, which 
included what is now Jersey City and Hoboken. This 
tract, to which he gave the Latin name of Pavonia, was 
granted to him as a Patroon under the imposing title 
of the Lord of Achtienhoven, that he might found 
there a feudal estate or manor of the kind which Van 
Rensselaer about the same period established in the 
land about Albany. Having vainly endeavored for 
several years to accomplish this object, he gave up the 
grant, and Abraham Verplanck was the first to avail 
himself of the opportunity thus offered to obtain, by 
purchase, a considerable portion of this fertile tract at 
or in the vicinity of Jersey City, where he soon estab- 
lished a flourishing farm, and, by selling off other por- 
tions of it unconditionally to actual settlers for farms 
and tobacco-plantations, he managed to bring about 
what the would-be feudal proprietor could not, an 
active and thriving agricultural settlement. In 1641 
he was selected by the inhabitants as one of the coun- 

2 



LO 

til of "Twelve Mien," the first attempl a1 any thing 
Like representative government in the colony, which 
had its origin in the following circumstance : 

Iii 1626 a peaceable Indian from Westchester, ac- 
companied by his son, a young boy, started for the 
Dutch fori to barter some beaver-skins, and was met 
upon his way, in the vicinity of "the Collect," by 
three of the inhabitants, who robbed him of his 
peltries, and, to conceal what they had done, murdered 
him. The boy, however, escaped, to remember the deed 
and to avenge it in the manner of his race. When 
he had arrived at the age of manhood, fifteen years 
afterward, he w r ent to "New Amsterdam, and, entering 
the house of an humble mechanic, struck him dead with 
the blow of an axe. This open and daring act, per- 
petrated under the very Malls of the fort, filled the 
whole settlement with consternation and alarm. The 
governor demanded the murderer, but his tribe, approv- 
ing of what he had done, refused to give him up, 
upon which the heads of families in Manhattan and it- 
vicinity were summoned to the fort, and, upon thegov- 
ern< >r apprising them of his design to make a general war 
upon the Indians, they selected twelve of their number 
as a representative body to confer with him. The 
"Twelve Men" decided against 1 1 1 « - Avar, evasively ad- 
vising the governor to wait for a fitting opportunity; 



11 

and, having in this way l>een called into existence as 
representatives, they proceeded to recommend a re- 
modelling of the government, so as to secure to the in- 
habitants the rights and privileges they had enjoyed 
in Holland, which resulted in an ordinance of Gov- 
ernor Kief dissolving that body and forbidding any 
future assemblage of the people, as " dangerous and 
tending to the great injury of the country and of his 
authority." Very soon afterward Abraham Verplanck 
was arrested " for slandering the authorities and ma- 
liciously tearing down an ordinance posted on the 
gate of the fort," possibly the one dissolving the pop- 
ular body, for which he was fined three hundred guil- 
ders. The imposition of this fine, a very heavy one 
at the time, appears to have wrought a thorough 
change in his sentiments; for in the following year, 
with two others who had served with him in the 
Council of the Twelve Men, he went to Kief, and, 
falsely professing to represent the wishes of the in- 
habitants, proposed that an attack should be made 
upon the unsuspecting savages, he and his two as- 
sociates offering to guide the soldiers and to assist 
them in making it. The proposition was eagerly ac- 
cepted, and led to the perpetration of the darkest deed 
that stains the annals of New Netherland. One hun- 
dred and twenty Indians at Pavonia and Corlear's 



12 

Hook were massacred in cold blood in their wigwams 
at midnight. Forty were murdered in their beds. In- 
fants, torn from their mothers' breasts, were chopped 
into pieces with axes, and the fragments thrown into 
the fire. Neither age nor sex was spared; and the 
cries of the unhappy wretches, borne across the waters 
of the Hudson, were heard on the ramparts of the fort 
at New Amsterdam, by the navigator De Vries, who 
has recorded the incident. 

That Abraham Verplanck was not merely one of the 
instigators, but one of the chief actors in the execution 
of this bloody deed, may be inferred from the fact that, 
when the matter came before the States-General for in- 
vestigation, the committee to whom it was referred 
recommended that two persons should be brought to 
Holland for examination, and Abraham Verplanck 
was one of them. It may very well have been, in view 
of this circumstance, that Mr. Verplanck never felt any 
desire to write the history of New Netherland, but left 
the task to be discharged long after he had become 
prominent as a literary man, by Dr. O. Callagham and 
Mr. Brodhead. Indeed, with the exception of a slight 
allusion in an oration delivered half a century ago, I 
am not aware that he ever wrote any thing about the 
people of New Netherland or their history. 

The investigation in Holland seems to have been 



13 

abandoned, or at least was productive of no injurious 
consequences to Abraham Verplanck, for lie grew in 
favor under the subsequent government of Stuyve- 
sant. In 1649 he was the owner of a plot of ground 
adjoining the fort, upon which he had a house and 
garden, which I suppose to have been the site of the 
present Bowling-Green, as it was taken that year to 
be used as an open place for the holding of the weekly 
fairs, or markets, another piece of land being given to 
him in exchange for it, and because there was only 
one open space or public square within the city walls 
for more than half a century afterward. In 1655 his 
name appears upon the list of those upon whom a 
compulsory tax was imposed for the defences of the 
city, and it may be mentioned as a characteristic, that 
it does not appear upon the list of those who had pre- 
viously made voluntary loans for the building of the 
wall from which Wall Street takes its name. Ten 
years afterward he appears as a witness to a treaty 
which Stuyvesant effected with the Indians for the 
acquisition of lands upon the South River, in Dela- 
ware, of which he became one of the grantees. He 
appears by the records to have been no respecter of 
the ordinances, where the disregard of them was at- 
tended by any advantage in trading, and to have been 
very litigious, involved in lawsuits with his mother-in- 



14 

law and his wife's relations respecting the lands sur- 
rounding "the Collect," and with others. In 1664 he 
was one of the signers of the remonstrance urging the 
inexorable Stuyvesant to capitulate to the English ; and 
we can imagine the temper with which the indignant 
governor read the passage advising him not " to call 
down the vengeance of Heaven for all the innocent 
blood which may be shed by reason of your honor's 
obstinacy." Upon the capitulation of the city, Abra- 
ham Verplanek was one of the two hundred and sev- 
enty-two who swore allegiance to the English, and 
with that act his name disappears from our records. 

His son, the first Gulian, was the founder of the 
subsequent wealth and prosperity of the family. He 
became a merchant, having his store upon Pearl 
Street, which then faced the water, between Broad 
and Whitehall Streets. He was a sharp-sighted man 
of business, attentive to his own interest, but regarded 
as worthy of so much trust and confidence, that he 
was one of the three persons charged with the care 
and settlement of Governor Lovelace's estate. When 
the Dutch repossessed themselves of the city in 1673, 
he was one of five selected by the government, out of 
fifteen recommended by a vote of the inhabitants, for 
the office of schepen, a position ranking next to that 
of burgomaster; but, while filling the position, he 



15 

\\;is tried tor holding intercourse wit li the English, a 
grave offence on the part of a magistrate in the eyes 
of his associates ; which he defended upon the ground 
that he did so to secure his estate in New Eng- 
land ; which not being considered satisfactory, a heavy 
fine was imposed upon him of five hundred beaver- 
skins. Upon the restoration of the city to the Eng- 
lish in 1G74, an enumeration was made of two hundred 
and seven of the most wealthy of the inhabitants, in 
which his personal estate is put down at five thousand 
florins, being the twenty-eighth in order on the list. A 
few years afterward he united with others in a purchase 
from the Indians of a large tract of land upon the Hud- 
son, which was followed shortly thereafter by the loca- 
tion of Fishkill, of which he was one of the founders — 
the first settlement made in Dutchess County. It was 
by this act chiefly that he laid the foundation of the fu- 
ture wealth and social influence of the family ; his de- 
scendants having managed, amid the mutations, revolu- 
tions, and changes, that have occurred in our history, 
to retain, to a very great extent, what he had the fore- 
thought to acquire. A family homestead, built about 
the commencement of the last century, was Mr. Ver- 
planck's country residence, which, together with the 
lands around it, has passed, by his death, to his only 
surviving son, William S. Verplanck, Esq., the father 
of a numerous family. 



16 

During the colonial period, the Verplancks, by in- 
termarriage with the leading English and Dutch fam- 
ilies, the Bayards and the Ludlows, the Van Cortlands 
and the Beekmans, increased in wealth and social im- 
portance. By their marriage with the Van Cortlands 
they acquired the large tract of land jutting out into 
Hudson River which is known as Verplanck's Point. 
In 1730 they intermarried with the Crommelins, an 
influential Dutch family, long afterward, and until 
a few years ago, represented in Amsterdam by the 
wealthy banking-house of that name. This family con- 
nection was further cemented by the marriage of Mr. 
Verplanck's grandfather with an heiress of one of 
principal members of this house, a few years before 
the breaking out of the American Revolution, and 
this family association with Holland was preserved 
in the middle name of Crommelin, borne alike by 
Mr. Verplanck and by his father. Throughout the 
whole of the colonial period, the family were, to employ 
a term that was then in use, " people of figure ; " the 
most distinguished member during that period be- 
ing Philip Verplanck, who, in 1734 and 1768, repre- 
sented the Manor of Cortland in the Colonial Assembly, 
and who, in 1746, was one of the commissioners to con- 
fer with the other colonies upon the French and Indian 
War. When the difficulty occurred with Great Brit- 



17 

am, like many of the Dutch families, their sympathies 
were -with the colonists. Samuel Verplanck, Mr. Ver- 
planck's grandfather, was a member of the general com- 
mittee of one hundred, organized in the city of New 
York in 1775, and, as a delegate of the Provisional 
Congress of the colony, he signed the celebrated Dec- 
laration of Association and Union against the preten- 
sions of Great Britain, one of the preparatory steps 
to the Declaration of Independence in the following 
year. But with that his active sympathies ceased, 
and he failed to fulfil the bold resolution to which 
he had bound himself by his signature, to " carry into 
execution whatever the Continental Congress should 
recommend." No doubt the possibility of the loss, in 
the event of failure, of his landed estate in Dutchess, 
and his possessions in the city of New York, was 
too great a risk for a member of a family that 
had been ever mindful of the preservation of their 
property. He had not the Celtic quality of blood 
which led Charles Carroll, in affixing his name to 
the Declaration of Independence, to imperil a vast 
estate upon the issue, and, that there might be no 
mistake, to add to his signature, "of Carrollton." 
In December of 1776, Thomas Paine uttered the 
memorable words, " These are the times that try men's 
souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot 



IS 

will, in this crisis, shrink from the sacred cause of his 
country ; " and Samuel Verplanck was one of the men 
to whom these words applied. He was not willing to 
risk family distinction or property upon the issue of a 
cause, though he believed it to be right, and although 
he had declared, under his own signature, that the salva- 
tion of the rights and liberties of America " depended 
upon a firm union of its inhabitants, in the vigorous 
prosecution of the measures necessary to oppose the 
arbitrary and oppressive acts of Great Britain." 
He took no further part in aid of the colonists, 
but carefully avoided doing any thing to incur their 
ill-will. His mansion and grounds at Fishkill be- 
came the headquarters of Baron Steuben during the 
period that the American Army were encamped in the 
vicinity, and in a large room in this mansion the meet- 
ing was held at which the Society of the Cincinnati 
was formed. Its owner appears to have acted with so 
much discretion, and to have given so little offence, 
that he escaped from being named in the act of for- 
feiture of 1779, and when the war closed he quietly 
repossessed himself of his property. As he was a 
rich man, and his Dutch wife was a woman of great 
intelligence and cultivation, he became one of the 
social magnates of the city of New York ; occupying 
a large double mansion in Wall Street, upon the site 



19 

of what was afterward the United States Assay build- 
ing, where, and upon his patrimonial estate at Fishkill, 
he kept up the old Dutch hospitality. He died at the 
homestead at Fishkill, in 1819, at the age of ninety-one. 
Having said thus much respecting the family, I 
cannot pass, at least without a brief notice, Gillian 
Verplanck, Mr. Verplanck's grand-uncle, after whom he 
was named, and who was in his time a very prominent 
man. He was for many years one of the leading mer- 
chants of the city, carrying on an extensive trade with 
Holland, where lie had been sent in early life for his 
education. Like his grand-nephew, he was a man of 
literary tastes. Mr. Kelby, of the Historical Society, 
called my attention to a paragraph in the Columbian 
of February 23, 1817, which I will read, as the verses 
are quite respectable, containing what the writer 
felt to be a political prophecy. 

" The following lines were transcribed from a pane 
of glass at an inn, in England : 

" Hail, happy Britain, Freedom's blest retreat, 
Great is thy power ; thy wealth, thy glory, great : 
But wealth and power have no immortal day, 
For all things only ripen to decay ; 
And when that time arrives, the lot of all, 
When Britain's glory, wealth, and power, must fall 



20 

Then shall thy sons, for such is Heaven's decree, 
In other worlds, another Britain see — 
And what thou art, America shall be. 

" (Signed) Gulian Verplanck. 

1775." 

His anticipations of the future glory of America, 
however, had little effect upon his loyalty when the 
struggle with the mother country arose, and he 
remained in New York during the long period of 
the British occupation, a steadfast adherent to the 
crown. When the Duke of Clarence, then a young 
midshipman, afterward William IV., was in New York, 
Gulian Verplanck was his associate, skated with him 
upon the Collect, and rescued him from drowning 
when he fell through a hole in the ice. He was, how- 
ever, a man of so much character and capacity, that 
his Tory antecedents in no way operated* to his 
prejudice, for he was more influential and prominent 
after the Revolution than before. He represented 
the city of New York in the House of Assembly 
in 1788-89, and again in 1796—97, and upon both 
occasions was elected Speaker, a position at that 
time of great dignity and influence. In 1790 he be- 
came the President of the Bank of New York, then 
the only bank in the city, and continued to be its 
President until his death in 1799. He was the father 



21 

of Johnson Verplanck, for many years a prominent 
editor in New York, an active Federal politician, and 
a literary man. 

Daniel C. Verplanck, Mr. Verplanek's father, mar- 
ried in early life Elizabeth Johnson, the daughter of 
the third and the grand-daughter of the first President 
of Columbia College, of which union Mr. Verplanck was 
the only child. His father afterward married Ann Wal- 
ton, the daughter of William Walton, the proprietor, 
during the Revolution, of the old mansion, still stand- 
ing in Pearl Street, known as the Walton House; by 
which marriage he had two daughters and three sons. 1 
After his second marriage he lived exclusively in Dutch- 
ess County, which he represented for six years in Con- 
gress, from 1803 to 1809, and later in life he was one 
of the County Judges. He died in Fishkill, in 1846, 
at the age of eighty-eight. 

Mr. Verplanck was born at his grandfather's house, 
in Wall Street, in 1786. Pie lost his mother at a very 
early age, and after his father's second marriage he was 
brought up exclusively by his grandmother, and passed 
most of his childhood in the house in which he was born 
and that of his grand-uncle Gulian, who lived a few 
doors below it, in Wall Street ; or in occasional visits 

1 Mary Ann Verplanck, Samuel Verplanck, Elizabeth Verplanck, Wil- 
liam Walton Verplanck, and James Delancey Verplanck. 



22 

to his mother's relations, the Johnsons, at Stratford, 
in Connecticut. Mrs. Henry Pierrepont remembered 
to have been present at a dinner-party at his grand- 
uncle's when young Gulian, then a very small boy, was 
brought in and placed upon the table, to repeat, for 
the entertainment of the company, a speech from one 
of the dramatists. The taste for the drama, thus early 
implanted, he retained through life. The theatre was 
always one of his greatest enjoyments, and his recollec- 
tions of the great actors he had seen in this country and 
Europe, his vivid remembrance and delicate discrim- 
ination of their distinctive qualities, and the many in- 
teresting anecdotes he had to tell respecting them, was 
one of the charming features in his table-talk. 

At his grandmother's house, and more especially 
at that of his grand-uncle, he had the opportunity of 
seeing all that was cultivated and refined of the society 
of New York at that period, and in his old age he fre- 
quently spoke of the happy hours he had spent in 
Gulian Verplanck's hospitable mansion, especially dur- 
ing the period when he was passing through college, 
and of the many distinguished persons he had seen 
there. 

He graduated at Columbia College in 1801, at the 
early age of fifteen. Having outlived nearly all his 
contemporaries, I have met with no one who could 



23 

communicate any particulars of his college-life; but it 
may be taken for granted that he was an apt student, 
and diligently earned his degree. After leaving col- 
lege he studied law in the office of the celebrated Ed- 
ward Livingston, and was admitted to the bar by 
Chancellor (then Chief-Justice) Kent, in 1807, at the 
age of twenty-one. 

In the following year he had an office as an attor- 
ney-at-law, at 51 Wall Street, and kept one for some 
years thereafter in Pine Street, but I apprehend did no 
business, as he was never known to have tried or ar- 
gued a cause in court except a case of his own, which 
will be hereafter referred to. 

In 1809 he may be said to have made his entrance 
into public life by the delivery of an oration upon the 
4th of July, in the old North Dutch Church in Wil- 
liam Street, before the Washington Benevolent So- 
ciety. He was at the time a Federalist, the party 
to which his family # belonged, and accordingly we 
find the young orator in this oration denouncing 
" the bold imposture and many-colored lies by which 
the friends of Washington were driven from public 
confidence." He portrayed in glowing rhetoric the 
disastrous effects of Jefferson's Administration, de- 
scribed the country during that period as " sunk in 
lethargy ; its people drugged with flattery ; its navy 



24 

dismantled; its commerce a prey to every petty 
pirate ; its judiciary trampled under feet, with corrup- 
tion sprouting from the head of the Administration 
and spreading through every department of the state, 
until the nation was brought to the very verge of ruin." 
Nor did the newly-elected President, Madison, fare 
much better. He was referred to as " the supporter of 
the calumniators of Washington, the patron of the 
admirers of French licentiousness who was content to 
submit in silence to the plans of men which had 
nearly brought the nation to the feet of Napoleon." 
All this was highly acceptable to the body before 
whom it was delivered. They printed the address, and 
with them, and with all who entertained the same sen- 
timents, he acquired considerable reputation, and was 
marked as a rising man. 

But he had been two years a student- at-law in the 
office of Edward Livingston, the talented leader of the 
Democratic party, and had the opportunity of learning 
something of the real views and sentiments of the 
other side. This association had doubtless opened his 
eyes to the fact that the general distrust of the people 
entertained by Hamilton and most of the leading 
Federalists was not destined to promote the success or 
secure the permanency of that party ; and he was con- 
sequently careful to incorporate in his oration the sen- 



25 

timent that "to the people of tins land experience has 
shown that the protection of their rights may be safely 
confided," indicating that he was then drifting toward 
the Democratic party, a result which an event that 
occurred two years afterward materially contributed 
to bring about. 

Iii 1811 one of the graduating class of Columbia 
College, afterward well known as Dr. J. B. Stevenson, 
\vli<> had been appointed one of the disputants in a 
political debate which was to take place at the college 
commencement, submitted, as required, what he was to 
say, to the inspection of one of the faculty, Dr. Wilson. 
It contained this passage: " Representatives ought to 
act according to the sentiments of their constituents," 
which Dr. Wilson required him to modify by limiting- 
it to one instance only. The young man remonstrated, 
but the doctor was inexorable, because, as he afterward 
testified, he considered it expedient that the young 
man should deliver correct principles, as he was to be 
the respondent in the debate. The commencement was 
held in Trinity Church before a crowded audience, and, 
when Stevenson came to reply, he omitted the qualifi- 
cation and delivered the passage exactly as he had 
written it. When his name was called for the de- 
livery of a diploma, he ascended the stage, and, as the 
president was in the act of handing him the one 

4 



26 

prepared for him, one of the professors interposed, and 
the president refused to confer the degree. The young 
man withdrew, overwhelmed by this public exposure, 
but upon returning to the body of the church he was 
surrounded by his fellow-graduates and friends, for he 
had been an industrious and most exemplary student, 
and at their instigation here turned to the platform and 
demanded his diploma. One of the professors, anxious 
to accommodate matters, said to him, " Probably you 
forgot," but the young man promptly answered, " I did 
not, but I would not utter what I did not believe." 
The diploma was again refused, upon which he had 
the courage to turn to the audience and say : " I am 
refused my degree, ladies and gentlemen, not from any 
literary deficiency, but because I refused to speak the 
sentiments of others as my own." This at once pro- 
duced a sensation, upon which Hugh Maxwell, an 
alumnus of the college and afterward a distinguished 
advocate, went upon the stage and addressed the 
audience in support of Stevenson, condemning the 
faculty in what they considered very bold and offensive 
language. At this juncture Mr. Verplanck also went 
upon the platform and demanded of Dr. Mason, the 
provost, who was the ruling power in the college, why 
the decree was not conferred. Dr. Mason informed 
him, and Verplanck answered : " The reason, sir, is not 



27 



satisfactory; Mr. Maxwell must be sustained." The 
audience now became greatly excited in favor of Steven- 
son, and Yerplanck, turning toward them, move.] a 
vote of thanks to Mr. Maxwell "for his zealous and 
honorable defence of an injured man," a proposition 
which the graduating class received with three cheers, 
followed by three groans for the provost. Verplanck's 
manner in this scene, as subsequently described by Dr. 
Mason, " was loud and rude, with an air of consequence 
and disdain, calculated to aid and increase the disturb- 
ance," and, according to the doctor's account, he " ap- 
peared as if erecting himself into a tribunal to judge 
above the heads of the faculty," a statement in which 
others who were present did not concur. Old as well as 
young men now took as active a part as Yerplanck or 
Maxwell ; and when Dr. Mason, in his official character 
as provost, came forward to restore order, he was, to 
employ his own words when examined as a witness, 
received with a "hiss that in manner and quality 
would not disgrace a congregation of snakes upon 
Snake Hill in New Jersey." He was compelled to re- 
tire, the police were brought in, and the commence- 
ment came to an end in confusion and disorder. 

From the college and the church the affair passed 
into the newspapers. The faculty published in the 
daily journals a lengthy vindication of their course, 



28 

and were answered by a rejoinder from the graduating 
class, and by replies from others who were present. A 
complaint was made to the grand jury, and seven of 
the principal actors, Stevenson, Verplanck, and Max- 
well being included, were indicted, and at the August 
term of the Court of Sessions, or, as it was then pop- 
ularly called, the Mayor's Court, they were arraigned 
and put upon their trial for the criminal offence of 
creating or assisting in a riot. De Witt Clinton, being 
then mayor of the city, presided ; and from the unusual 
circumstance of such an occurrence in a church upon 
such an occasion, and the fact that all who were 
indicted were members of leading families of the 



& 



city, the trial excited the deepest interest. Verplanck 
and Maxwell defended themselves, and three of the 
most eminent counsel of that day, David B. Ogden, 
Josiah O. Hoffman, and Peter A. Jay, appeared for the 
other defendants. The principal members of the fac- 
ulty were examined as witnesses, conspicuous among 
whom was Dr. Mason, the provost of the college, in 
the earnestness and zeal which he displayed to secure 
a conviction. He was at the time the most eloquent 
preacher in the city, or indeed in the country, and in 
giving his testimony brought all the weight of his pop- 
ularity and his intellectual gifts to bear with great 
effect against the accused. 



29 

Verplanck addressed tlie jury upon his own behalf. 

He declared, which was no doubt the truth, that he 
was moved to do what he did solely from his sense of 
the injustice of the college authorities, in publicly re- 
fusing to confer the degree because the young man 
would not utter their political sentiments. "There 
was," he said, "gentlemen of the jury, a lofty spirit of 
gallantly about the conduct of Mr. Maxwell with which 
at the time I could not but sympathize, and which now 
I cannot but admire. He was bold in the cause of 
friendship and of character. I approved of his behav- 
ior, and I am proud that I did so ; " and then gratified 
his own feelings at least by telling the jury that Dr. 
Mason was " a man towering in the proud consciousness 
of intellectual strength, little accustomed to yield, or 
even to listen to the opinion of others, that he appeared 
as a witness pouring forth upon him and Maxwell all 
the bitterness of his rancor and the overboiling of his 
contemj^t ; throwing off the priest and the gentleman 
and assuming the buffoon ; showering upon them his 
delicate irony, his choice simile of the congregation of 
snakes, and all the other savory flowers of rhetoric, in 
which he was so fertile, and had poured forth in such 
abundance," and, appealing to the jury, asked, " What 
credit will you give to a witness, inflamed by passion, 
smarting with wounded pride, and mortified self-con- 
fidence ? " 



30 

It was very doubtful whether the offence, which 
the law denominates a riot, had been proved, or in 
fact committed, whether there was any thing more than 
a strong expression of disapprobation on the part of 
the audience, an occurrence more or less incident to the 
nature of public assemblages, which became a scene 
of disorder from the faculty persisting in refusing to 
give the young man his diploma. No actual violence 
on the part of any of the defendants was proved, nor 
was what occurred of a nature to create public terror, 
a necessary ingredient in the crime of riot. There 
was probably nothing more than a breach of the 
peace. 

It was pertinently suggested by Mr. Jay that if 
the college permitted the students to discuss a polit- 
ical question, as a part of the public exercises at a 
commencement, they should have been allowed the 
free exercise of their own views in the discussion of it, 
and that the supervision of their remarks should have 
been confined to the correction merely of literary de- 
fects; that otherwise there was no freedom in the 
debate, but the students were simply mouth-pieces to 
utter the political views and sentiments of the pro- 
fessors ; that there was nothing in the statutes of the 
college which imposed the penalty of a refusal of a 
degree if a student would not incorporate in his speech 



31 

what a professor directed liim to put in ; that a reso- 
lution had been inserted in the minutes of 1796, sub- 
jecting the compositions of the students to the inspec- 
tion of the faculty, and, if any such penalty as the 
deprivation of a degree were attached, the students 
were left in ignorance of it, as there was nothing of 
the kind in the college statutes; and he argued that it 
was not the young men upon trial, but the faculty, 
who were responsible for the disturbance ; that they 
had, perhaps, without sufficient reflection, fallen into 
an error, which their pride prevented them afterward 
from admitting. They had committed a palpable act 
of injustice, and it was their unwillingness to recede 
from it, and their determination to persist in it, that 
had exasperated the audience. They consequently 
were the real authors of the riot, if there was one, 
but he insisted, as did the other counsel for the de- 
fence, that, in the sense of the law, there had been no 
riot. 

Clinton, however, had no misgivings in respect to 
the law. He charged the jury that the offence had 
been committed, that all the defendants were guilty 
of it, and got rid of the definition of a riot by Haw- 
kins, a learned elementary authority upon the criminal 
law, by declaring it to be " undoubtedly bad." He 
commented upon the conduct of the defendants with 



32 

great severity, and was especially severe upon Ver- 
planck. It was difficult, be said, to speak of his con- 
duct in terms sufficiently strong ; that he was one of 
the principal ringleaders " in the scene of disorder and 
disgrace," and that in his reply to the provost, and 
in his moving a vote of thanks to Maxwell, he evinced 
" a matchless insolence." He told the jury that they 
were bound, " by every consideration arising out of the 
public peace and the public morals, and by their re- 
gard for an institution venerable for its antiquity, to 
bring in all the defendants guilty ; " that he had no 
hesitation in declaring that the disturbance was " the 
most disgraceful, the most unprecedented, the most 
unjustifiable, and the most outrageous, that had ever 
come to the knowledge of the court." 

Under this charge the jury found the defendants 
guilty. Verplanck and Maxwell were fined two hundred 
dollars each, which was imposed, says Renwick, Clin- 
ton's biographer, in an address conveying a severe, mer- 
ited, and pointed reprimand. They were required, in 
addition, to procure sureties for their future good be- 
havior; and the same authority states that Clinton 
hesitated for some time whether he was not called 
upon, by a regard for justice, to inflict also the dis- 
grace of imprisonment. 

But the result of the prosecution did not produce 



33 

the effect which its promoters anticipate!. Public 
feeling, especially in the Democratic party, was with 
the defendants, and the course of Clinton, upon the 
trial, greatly augmented the hostility of the Madiso- 
nian Democrats to him. We were then on the eve of a 
war with England. The measures of Madison had not 
been sufficiently energetic to satisfy the more ardent 
of the Democrats ; and Clinton, relying upon a diver- 
sion of the dissatisfied portion of that party in his fa- 
vor, had taken the field as a candidate for the presi- 
dency against Madison, and at this very time was in- 
triguing to secure the support of the Federalists. By 
the Democrats his course upon the trial was at- 
tributed to a desire to ingratiate himself with the Fed 
eral party, and matters subsequently brought to light 
disclose that this belief was not wholly without foun- 
dation. Dr. Mason, a Federalist of the straitest 
sect, either shortly before, or about the time of the 
trial, had acted as the private friend of Clinton in 
bringing about an interview between him and John 
Jay, Rufus King, and Gouverneur Morris, three of the 
principal Federal leaders, which failed of its object 
through John Jay's disgust at hearing Clinton say that 
he had never sympathized with the Democrats, but had 
always been in favor of the policy of Washington and 
Adams's Administration — an extraordinary statement 



31 

from the man whose denunciation of the Federal lead- 
ers, as " men who would rather reign in hell than serve 
in heaven," had rung through every part of the Union. 
It was therefore not without some ground that he was 
exposed to the suspicion of having been actuated upon 
this trial by a desire to do something that would gratify 
the Federalists, and especially his negotiator with them, 
a man of imperious temper and despotic will, who had 
set his heart upon the success of this prosecution. 

Two months after this trial Mr. Verplanck was mar- 
ried to Miss Eliza Fenno, by whom he had two chil- 
dren, William L. and Gulian Verplanck, Jr. The lady 
died in Paris, in 1817. The younger son, Gulian, 
in 1845. 

During this year, 1811, he made his first venture 
in authorship, in an anonymous pamphlet in the form 
of a letter, addressed to the learned Dr. Samuel L. 
Mitchell, purporting to come from Abimelech Coody, 
ladies' shoemaker, 289 Division Street, beseeching the 
learned doctor, who was then a United States Senator, 
to advise him how he should invest ten thousand dol- 
lars which he had drawn in a lottery, and detailing his 
ill success in attempting to use it in banks, in manu- 
facturing companies, and in discounting commercial 
paper. This production was rather playful than witty, 
but it attracted attention at the time from the nature 



35 

of tlie subject, and because it was a pioneer of a kind 
of writing in which Artemus Ward and other humor- 
ists have been so successful, where much of the effect 
is produced by the way in which the words are spelled 
and in the clever imitation of the style of an illiterate 
person. 

Having entered the literary arena under the so- 
1 (liquet of Abimelech Goody, he used this nom dephime 
afterward in pamphlets and in political articles in the 
newspapers during the years 1814 and 1815. One 
was a vigorous appeal to the Federalists to come out. 
manfully in support of the war. In another, " A Fa- 
ble for Statesmen and Politicians," the struggle for 
the presidency was depicted as a strife among the va- 
rious animals for supremacy, in which Clinton figures 
as a " young Irish greyhound of high mettle and ex- 
travagant pretensions." 

In 1812 and 1813 Clinton cooperated with the 
Federalists, first in his effort for the presidency and 
afterward in an attenrpt to defeat Governor Tompkins; 
and Verplanck, though an avowed Federalist, exerted 
himself against Clinton, whom he regarded as playing 
a double part, by secretly acting with the Federalists, 
who opposed the war, and outwardly with that portion 
of the Democratic party who regarded Madison's meas- 
ures as not sufficiently energetic. 



36 

In the spring of 1814 lie took a more decided 
course in the formation of a small party of Federalists 
opposed to Clinton and in favor of the war, who ran 
a separate ticket for members of Assembly from the 
city of New York, Mr. Verplanck being one of the nomi- 
nees. The pretension of this organization to repre- 
sent the Federalists was unsparingly ridiculed by Cole- 
man, the editor of the Evening JPost, who bestowed 
upon them the sobriquet of "the Coodies," and the 
ridicule finding support in the very small vote which 
they polled at the election, the organization was aban- 
doned. But, though small in numbers, they were for- 
midable in talent, and kept up the war against Clinton 
by clever and witty articles in the newspapers, which 
he appears to have felt much more keenly than the 
organized efforts of the politicians. 

In 1815 Clinton was removed from the office of 
Mayor of New York. He had become alienated from 
the Democratic party, without acquiring the confidence 
of the Federalists; and, with his political prospects 
blasted, he found himself with a large family, deprived 
of a lucrative office, and heavily in debt. This painful 
position was augmented by the fact that his life had 
been passed wholly in politics and that he had never 
followed any business or profession. At this moment, 
when many would have sunk in despondency, this 



37 

remarkable man determined t<> devote his enererie 
to a work with which hia name will be forevei 
associated — the construction of the Erie Canal; 
and, anticipating political opposition both to it and 
to himself, he resolved to attack with their own 
weapons those who by their writings had assisted in 
producing his downfall. Accordingly, in 1815, a 
pamphlet appeared entitled "An Account of Abime- 
lech Coody and other celebrated writers of New York, 
in a letter from a traveller to his friend in South 
Carolina." Under a show of apparent fairness, it was 
designed to demolish the political and literary influence 
" of the Coodies," whom he described as of " a hybrid 
nature, the combined spawn of Federalism and Jacobin- 
ism, generated in the venomous passions of disappoint- 
ment and revenge." Washington Irving, Paulding, and 
many others, came in for severe castigation, but he 
especially devoted himself to Verplanck (Abimelech 
Coody). He reviewed all his literary performances, 
charged him with avarice, and, what was apparently a 
high offence in Clinton's eyes, of writing in the magazines 
for money. He detailed the particulars of Verplanck's 
trial and conviction as a rioter in Trinity Church, giving 
extracts from the severest portions of his own charge ; 
and, after admitting that Verplanck had more knowledge 
than his brother wits, and was polite in his manner, he 



38 

proceeded, in an imaginary interview, to give this not 
very complimentary account of his personal appearance : 
" When I saw Abimelech Coody, he arose from his 
chair as I was announced and did not approach me in 
a direct line, but in a sidelong way, or diagonally, a 
kind of echelon movement, reminding one of Lin- 
naeus' s character of a dog, who, he says, always inclines 
his tail to the left. This I attributed at first to diffi- 
dence, but I no sooner had a full view of him, than 

I instantly saw 

' the proud patrician sneer, 
The conscious simper, and the jealous leer.' 

" His person is squat and clumsy, reminding one of 
Humpty Dumpty on the wall. A nervous tremor is 
concentrated at the end of each nostril, from his habit- 
ual sneering and carping, with a look as wise as that of 
Solomon, at the dividing of the child, upon an old piece 
of tapestry." And, after having disposed of Verplanck, 
he proceeded, under the shelter of an anonymous name, 
to give the following very nattering account of him- 
self: "Mr. Clinton, among his other great qualifica- 
tions, is distinguished for his marked devotion to sci- 
ence ; few men have read more and few men can claim 
more varied and extensive knowledge, and the bounties 
of Nature have been improved by persevering and unre- 
mitting industry." It would scarcely be credited that 



39 

a man should write in this way respecting himself, and 
the existence of this passage might justify a doulyt of 
his being the author of the pamphlet, were it not that 
the original manuscript, in his handwriting, which 
was preserved by the printer, is in existence. 

It would have been better had he left Abimelech 
Coody alone ; for, though Clinton, as a writer, had a 
great deal of force, and was something of a master of 
invective, he had not Verplanek's learning, his critical 
acuteness, nor his wit — qualities of which the latter 
made ample use when the proper time arrived. 

It would appear from Clinton's statement that Mr. 
Verplanck held some military position during the war, 
for he enumerates, among his other acts, that he settled 
down into a captain of sea-fencibles for money. He 
was, however, what Clinton was not, an earnest and 
consistent supporter of the war from the beginning, 
alienating himself in this respect from his family and 
from all his previous associations. 

In 1813 Washington Irving undertook the editorial 
charge of a periodical known as the Analectic Maga- 
zine, in which he was aided by the contributions of 
two of his literary friends, Verplanck and Paulding. 
Mr. Verplanek's contributions, which will be found 
under the signature of V., consisted chiefly of biograph- 
ical sketches of such leading;; Americans as Samuel 



40 

Adams, Fisher Ames, Oliver .Ellsworth, and others. 
These papers, though exceedingly well written, were, 
as biographical sketches, wanting in a due apprecia- 
tion of some of the characters delineated. He did not, 
for instance, give Samuel Adams the position he de- 
served as one of the master-spirits of the American 
Revolution, for the reason, probably, that the facts 
which show it had not then come to light. 

At the close of 1816 he went to Europe, and was 
absent two years. He was joyfully welcomed, upon 
his arrival in London, by his friend Washington Irving. 
" The sight of him," writes Irving to Mrs. Hoffman, 
" brought a thousand melancholy recollections of past 
times and scenes ; of friends that are distant, and others 
that are gone to a better world; " and the two friends 
passed much of their time together. While he was 
in London he was a frequent attendant in the Court of 
King's Bench, then presided over by the celebrated Lord 
Ellenborough. Of Ellenborough, and of what occurred 
in the law courts, he had many pleasant anecdotes. 
As a ludicrous illustration of the weight which this 
eminent jurist gave to the want of collegiate educa- 
tion in a professional man, Mr. Verplanck had this 
anecdote : that he was present in court in an action 
brought by a surgeon for the recovery of his bill,' 
which the person who employed him resisted, as an 



41 

unreasonable charge. These were not the days of Sir 
A-tley Cooper, or of Dr. Mott, and Lord Ellenborough, 
who probably looked upon the calling of a surgeon as 
but slightly removed from that of a barber, was de- 
scribed by Mr. Verplanck as closing his charge to the 
jury, in his deep-toned voice and with all his impres- 
siveness of manner, in these words : " I submit to you, 
gentlemen of the jury, whether this is not an enor- 
mous charge on the part of a man whose education has 
been illiberal, and whose art is mechanical." 

He was fortunate, in 1816, in seeing Mrs. Siddons 
in her two greatest characters, Queen Katherine and 
Lady Macbeth, upon the only two occasions after her 
retirement, when she consented to reappear, first for 
the benefit of her brother, and afterward at the special 
request of the royal family. He spoke of her per- 
formance, upon both occasions, as transcending any 
thing he had ever witnessed, expressing this opinion 
after he had seen Rachel and Ristori in their finest 
personations. He was also present in 1817 when her 
brother, John P. Kemble, took his farewell of the stage, 
in the character of Coriolanus. He described Kemble 
as a careful, studied, and classical actor, who was very 
fine in Roman characters, but not equal to Cooke or to 
Kean in some of the master-creations of Shakespeare, 
Bueh as Othello, Lear, Macbeth, Shylock, and Richard 



42 

the Third. He saw Kenible in Hamlet, winch was 
considered the most perfect of his performances, and 
paid Mr. Edwin Booth the compliment of saying that 
his personation of Hamlet was superior to that of 
Kemble, Cooke, or Kean. After leaving England he 
made the usual tour of the Continent, and passed much 
of his time in Paris, a close observer of the effects 
produced by the reactionary movement that followed 
upon the downfall of Napoleon. He especially enjoyed, 
while in Paris, the acting of Talma, Mdlle. Mars, aud 
Mdlle. George, for he was an excellent French scholar, 
and as thoroughly acquainted with the dramatic litera- 
ture of France as he was with that of England. 

Upon his return to this city, in 1818, he delivered an 
anniversary discourse before the New York Historical 
Society. It is among the most finished of his produc- 
tions, and greatly augmented his literary reputation. 
Among other things in this admirable discourse, he suc- 
cessfully vindicated the benevolent Las Casas from the 
charge of Robertson, and other historians, of having 
been the one to suggest the importation of negroes from 
Africa for slaves, as a means of dispensing with the en- 
slavement of the Indians, a statement until then univer- 
sally credited. He reviewed the leading events con- 
nected with the colonization of New England, the Mid 
die States, and some of the Southern States, interweav- 



4:5 

ing his observations with some finely-sketched portraits, 
especially of Oglethorpe and Bishop Berkeley, calling 
attention for the first time in this country to Berkeley's 
well-known poem, containing the projohetic line, " West- 
ward the course of empire takes its way." In adverting 
to the founding of this city by the Dutch, he vindi- 
cated the Hollanders from the aspersions of English 
writers, and referred to his friend Irving 1 s " Knicker- 
bocker," in these words : 

" It is more in sorrow than in anger that I feel my- 
self compelled to add to these gross instances of na- 
tional injustice, a recent work of a writer of our own, 
who is justly considered one of the brightest orna- 
ments of American literature. I allude to the bur- 
lesque history of New York, in which it is painful to 
see a mind as admirable for its exquisite perception of 
the beautiful, as it is for its quick sense of the ridicu- 
lous, wasting the riches of its fancy on an ungrateful 
theme, and its exuberant humor in a coarse caricature." 
Irving, writing home to his brother, says : " I have seen 
what Verplanck said of my work. He did me more 
than justice in what he said of my mental qualifications, 
and he said nothing of my work that I have not long 
thought of it myself. He is one of the honestest of 

men I know of in speaking his opinion His own 

talents and acquirements are too great to suffer him to 



44 

entertain jealousy; but, were I his bitterest enemy, 
such an opinion have I of his integrity of mind, that 
I would refer any one to him, for an honest account of 
me, sooner than to any one else." 

Upon Verplanck's return, Clinton, through his la- 
bors as one of the commission of inquiry, and his 
earnest advocacy of the Erie Canal, had been restored 
to popular favor and was Governor of the State ; but 
there was still a strong party against him, upon whom 
Clinton conferred the sobriquet, by which they were 
long afterward known, of " The Bucktails," and with 
that party Mr. Verplanck allied himself. 

The fruit of this political connection was the ap- 
pearance in the following year, 1819, of a production 
which was then extensively read in the city and in the 
State, uj3on which the newspapers bestowed the popu- 
lar name which it afterward bore, of " The Bucktail 
Bards." It was a poetical satire upon Clinton, of great 
merit not only in the epigrammatic point of the verse, 
but in the wit and learning displayed in the notes with 
which it was profusely garnished. It first ajypeared in 
the form of a brief poetical epistle, entitled " Dick Shift," 
which was afterward, during the same year, augmented 
in quantity and published with another poetical effu- 
sion assuming to come from one Major Pindar Puff, a 
friend of Clinton's, and some smaller poems, the whole 



45 

being embraced under the general title of "The State 
Triumvirate," to whieh a ludicrously learned and witty 
introduction was added, and an increased quantity of 
notes. My limits will admit only of the observation 
that the description of the hero, Dick Shift, an un- 
principled politician and applicant for office ; the por- 
trait of the learned Dr. Samuel L. Mitchell ; the inter- 
view with Clinton ; and the meeting of the council, in 
which Dick's application for office is passed upon, will 
bear comparison with anything in Hudibras or Swift : 
while the imitation of the Irish orator, Charles Phillips ; 
the French congratulatory poem ; the ludicrous epi- 
gram disguised in Greek letters, purporting to come 
from Dr. Parr; the philological dissertation upon the 
derivation and meaning of the word Bucktail ; and 
the learned letter of Dr. Mitchell in the notes, explain- 
ing scientifically the kind of vermin that troubled the 
sapient Mr. Pell, the secretary and political ally of 
Clinton, are all full of point and humor. 

The object of this production was to expose the 
political venality and corruption of many of the lead- 
ing men that surrounded Clinton, as well as to take 
down the Governor's literary and scientific pretensions, 
which was done with telling effect both in the poem 
and in the notes. 

" The Bucktail Bards " was at the time attributed 



46 

to Mr. Verplanck, though it lias been since supposed to 
have been the work of several hands, and the names 
of Judge John Duer, and of Rudolph Bunner, an active 
politician and a man of vivacity and wit, have been 
named as connected with him in the production of it. 
He was himself always very reticent upon the subject. 
When called upon, at the dinner given in the Century to 
Fitz- Greene Halleck, to respond to a toast compliment- 
ary to this satire, he evaded the question of the au- 
thorship, but upon another occasion impliedly ad- 
mitted his connection with it, but that was all. He 
probably felt (for he was not a man to bear animosi- 
ties) that he had accomplished, by its production at the 
time, all that he had desired, and was willing to let the 
controversy end with the causes that had produced it. 
In this year, 1819, he was elected by the anti-Clin- 
tonians, or Bucktails, to the Legislature, as a member 
from the city of New York, and continued to represent it 
in the Assembly during the years 1820, 1821, 1822, and 
1823. He took no prominent part as a speaker or as 
a debater, nor is his name mentioned in any of the 
struggles which led to the overthrow of the old Coun- 
cil of Appointment, and the adoption of a new Consti- 
tution in 1821. He was chairman of the Committee 
upon Education, and appears to have devoted himself 
to those quiet legislative labors which produce their 



47 

effects without attracting the attention which is eriven 
to exciting political discussions in representative bod- 
ies. In fact, like Clinton himself, he never became a 
ready public speaker or debater. Whatever he did 
was the result of previous thought and preparation ; 
and even then, though his matter was excellent, his 
manner was unimpressive, his voice unattractive, and 
his gestures awkward. He was fluent and easy- 
enough with his pen, and, when he had before him a 
carefully-written address, he could read it before a lit- 
erary or other public body with considerable effect. 

In 1821 he was appointed a professor in the Gen- 
eral Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church, 
in the city of New York, and after his retirement 
from the Legislature, in 1824, he published a volume 
" On the Nature and Uses of the Evidences of Ke- 
vealed Religion," a work of sterling merit. Though 
the subject was one upon which several able and well- 
known works had been written, his treatment of it had 
an especial merit of its own. He did not bring together, 
like Lardner, the great array of historical proof, nor 
methodize it, to make the conclusions it warrants more 
apparent, like Paley ; nor reason from the analogy of 
Nature, like Butler; but he relied mainly upon the in- 
ternal evidence which Christianity itself affords of its 
divine origin. Toward the close of the essay he 



43 



surve}'ed the leading features of the historical proof, 
but the body of the work was devoted to show- 
ing the superiority of Christianity to every other form 
of religious belief, in its adaptation to the wants and 
hopes of man's nature. It is impossible to read this 
book without being profoundly impressed by the sin- 
cerity of "the writer's convictions, and it abounds in 
passages of great force, earnestness, and beauty, of 
which the following may be cited as a specimen : 

" Prophecy announces the advent of the religion of 
Jesus ; history records its progress ; literature and criti- 
cism combine to attest the muniments of its doctrines ; 
but its surest witnesses are to be found in man's own 
breast — in the grandeur of his thoughts — in the low- 
ness of his desires — -in the aspirations which lift him 
toward the heavens, in the vices which weigh him to 
the earth — in his sublime, his inexplicable conceptions 
of infinity and eternity — in his humiliating experience 
of folly, misery, and guilt. ... It unfolds to him his 
own character and situation, his duties and the means of 
discharging them, the moral diseases under which he 
labors, and the remedies he needs. ... It presents to 
him a high and beautiful, an unostentatious and pure 
morality, taught in weighty and impressive aphorisms, 
in natural and touching similitudes, or in the most 
engaging forms of action and character. ... It speaks 



40 

to him of the nature and attributes of God, and this 
not in the way of dry and didactic systems, but as 
those attributes are actually exhibited in the manifes- 
tations of His power and goodness. While it offers 
to man's consideration subjects to engage and employ 
the noblest powers of his reason, it addresses him also 
as a being largely endowed with sentiments and affec- 
tions, and it calls upon the warm sensibilities and 
strong emotions of his breast, moving him in turns by 
each and every rational motive of interest, duty, and 
feeling, to remorse, to fear, to repentance, to devotion, 
and to gratitude." 

This period of comparative leisure was productive 
of other fruits. His attention was attracted by the 
want of commercial morality in that period of wild 
speculations and fluctuations in value which preceded 
the panic of 1825, and the legal rules by which con- 
tracts for the buying and selling of merchandise are 
governed, which, as he conceived, were insufficient to 
secure that integrity in trading which he deemed in 
dispensable to a commercial people. Accordingly, in 
1825, he published a volume called an "Essay on the 
Doctrine of Contracts as affected in Law and Morals by 
Concealment, Error, or Inadequate Price." Whatever 
may be the judgment of lawyers upon the modifica- 
tions he proposed in the rules upon this branch of the 



50 

commercial law, there can be but one opinion in re- 
spect to the legal learning displayed in the work, and 
upon the ability with which it is written. It would 
have produced at the time a marked impression, had 
its author been an eminent lawyer or judge, but, 
emanating from one unknown in the practice of the 
law, it appears to have attracted but little attention. 
It was, moreover, most unjustly assailed by the editor 
of a law journal then published in the city of New 
York, who, so far as it related to the law, spoke of it 
with the utmost contempt, and, as an ethical treatise, 
pronounced it of no value. He recommended those 
who had not bought it, to leave it untouched upon the 
bookseller's shelves, and those who had, to let it lie 
upon their tables with its leaves uncut. It may be 
doubted, from his remarks, if the writer had ever read 
it, and the whole article bears internal evidence of hav- 
ing been written by a personal or political enemy* 
The reviewer was answered by William Sampson, a 
lawyer of some literary notoriety at the time, whose 
praise of the work, at least among lawyers, was prob- 
ably as detrimental as the other writer's abuse; for 
Sampson, in public addresses, in pamphlets, and in 
newspaper articles, had indulged for years in an indis- 
criminating denunciation of the whole system of the 
common law, a course as extreme and as unreasonable 



as the legal bigotry of those who consider it the per- 
fection of human reason, and as beyond the possibility 
of improvement. 

One of the leading objects of this work was to 
bring about some modification of the rule of car rat 
< mptor, by which, in the event of any defect in the ar- 
ticle sold, the loss is upon the buyer, unless he has 
bought upon an express warranty, or the seller has 
been guilty of fraud. He urged with great force the 
unjust extent to which this rule had been carried, and 
gave many illustrations of cases in which it would be 
to the benefit of commerce, entirely practicable and 
certainly just, to impose the loss upon the seller; and, 
having been engaged for many years in the chief com- 
mercial city of the Union, in the discharge of duties 
involving the practical application of this legal rule, I 
am enabled to say that the law is coming round to the 
recognition of some of the very distinctions insisted 
upon in this derided book; and I may add, as the 
result of my experience, that, if a more strict and just 
rule had been applied, we should, I think, have had a 
higher standard of morality in buying and selling, 
without any diminution of our commercial prosperity 
as a people. 

During this year, 1824, he delivered a discourse at 
the annual meeting of the American Academy of the 



52 

Fine Arts, the superiority of which to a much-lauded 
address of Clinton's before the same body, eight years 
previously, is very marked. I know of no production, 
within the same limits, in which the reasons why a 
nation should encourage the development of the fine 
arts are so forcibly stated; that describes so felici- 
tously the beneficial influence which works of art exer- 
cise upon individuals, or which points out so clearly the 
causes of the pleasure which they impart. A consider- 
able portion of this discourse was devoted to an ex- 
amination of the state of architecture in this country, 
and suggestions were made for its improvement, many 
of which, are as applicable at the present day as at the 
time when they were delivered. 

In 1825 Mr. Verplanck was elected to Congress as 
a representative from the city of New York, and con- 
tinued to be a member of the House of Representatives 
for eight years, or until 1833. My limits will not allow 
me to review in detail his congressional career during 
a period which embraced the whole of John Quincy 
Adams's Administration and the first four years of Gen- 
eral Jackson's. It was, as will be remembered, one of 
the most exciting periods in our political history, and 
in which he was an influential actor. I may refer to 
the fact that it was through his instrumentality chiefly 
that the law of copyright was extended from twenty- 



53 

Jit to forty-eight years, in recognition of which a 
public dinner was given to him in this city. He was 
chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, then 
the most responsible as well as the most influential po- 
sition in the House. To this committee was intrusted 
the delicate subject of the tariff, which at that period 
agitated the whole country, gave rise to the political 
doctrine of nullification, and threatened the dismember- 
ment < >f the Union. It was a great national crisis, through 
which the country was carried in safety by the adop- 
tion of the famous Compromise Act of 1833, a master- 
stroke of policy, which pacified the nation, and satisfied 
both the North and the South. This compromise Mr. 
Verplanck was one of the parties in bringing about. As 
chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, he re- 
ported a bill for the diminution of duties until they 
reached the revenue standard. As the passage of this 
1 rill in the House was apprehended by Mr. Clay, the lead- 
er of the protectionists, action upon it at their request 
was delayd. Consultations followed, and a compromise 
for a gradual diminution of duties over a period of more 
than two presidential terms was privately agreed upon, 
a bill was prepared to that effect and introduced in the 
Senate by Mr. Clay, and discussed. Pending its discus- 
sion, the bill of the Committee of Ways and Means came 
up in the House, when the one which had been pri- 



54 

vately agreed upon was offered as a substitute. It was 
referred to Mr. Verplanek' s committee, was reported by 
him the next morning, and passed the House. It was 
immediately thereafter brought to the Senate, and, hav- 
ing the united support of Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun, 
was adopted. The chief difference between it and 
the bill of Mr. Verplanek was, that his bill provided 
for an immediate reduction in part, and a final reduc- 
tion to the revenue standard in 1834 ; while the other 
provided for a gradual diminution to that standard 
until reached in the year 1842. The whole credit 
of the measure was, however, accorded to Mr. Clay, 
and little if any attention given to the fact that it 
was the bill of Mr. Verplanek, and the fact that he 
had a majority in the House in favor of it, that 
brought things to a crisis and to a settlement. He 
took no pains himself to advise the world of his 
share in this important measure. He was throughout 
life modest in respect to his own services or acquire- 
ments, and appears to have been indifferent to the 
value of political or literary fame. 

The message of General Jackson, recommending the 
removal of the deposits from the Bank of the United 
States, was also referred to this committee. Mr. Ver- 
planek reported a resolution, declaring as the oj)inion 
of the House, that the deposits were safe in the custody 



55 

of the bank, which was adopted by a large majority 
This brought him into open collision with General Jack- 
son, and the result was his separation, with many others, 
from the Democratic party, and the formation of the 
Whig party, of which he was one of the founders. In 
the following year, 1834, he was nominated by the 
Whigs for the office of Mayor of New York, in opposi- 
tion to his Democratic colleague in Congress, Cornelius 
W. Lawrence, which gave rise to one of the most excit- 
ing municipal contests that has ever occurred in this 
city, in which his Democratic opponent was elected by 
the small majority of one hundred and fifty-two. 

Upon retiring from Congress, he devoted himself 
more especially to literary pursuits, and contributed ar- 
ticles to the JL'nvr, a literary journal then published in 
New York, among which was a charming memoir of 
Robert C. Sands, his literary associate, together with 
Mr. Bryant, in the production about this period of three 
volumes of a literary annual, TJie Talisman, which 
contains many light articles from his pen. 

Clinton died in 1828. Two years afterward, Mr. 
Yerplanck delivered a discourse before the literary 
societies of Columbia College, and, forgetting what- 
ever cause he had for complaint at Clinton's conduct 
upon his trial, and his coarse personality in the sketch 
of Abimelech Coody, he availed himself of the occa_ 



0$ 

sion of this address to offer this noble tribute to his 
memory : 

" I gladly pay the homage due to his eminent and 
lasting services, and honor the lofty ambition which 
taught him to look to great works of public utility, and 
their successful execution, as his arts of gaining or of 
redeeming the confidence of a generous and public-spir- 
ited people. Whatever of party animosity might have 
blinded me to his merits, had died away long before 
his death, and I could now utter his honest praises 
without the imputation of hollow pretence from 
others, or the mortifying consciousness in my own 
breast of rendering unwilling and tardy justice to 
noble designs and great public services." 

In the same year, 1830, he interested himself in 
the movement for the erection of a public monument 
to the great forensic orator and patriot, Thomas Addis 
Emmet, and was the author of the lengthy English 
inscription which records, upon the obelisk in St. 
Paul's churchyard, the services and merits of this dis- 
tinguished man. In 1833 Mr. Verplanck published a 
collection of his own discourses, and for many years 
thereafter he continued to deliver addresses before lit- 
erary and other bodies, distinguished for the elegance 
with which they were written, and the comprehensive- 
ness and felicity with which he handled various sub- 



57 

jects within the wide range of his knowledge. Among 
them I should not pass without notice his introductory 
address to a course of scientific lectures before the 
Mechanics 1 Institute of the city of New York, in 18.33, 
as exhibiting the facility with which he could impress 
upon the popular mind the attractiveness and value of 
scientific studies ; his discourse in the same year be- 
fore Geneva College, upon "The Right Moral Influ- 
ence and Use of Liberal Studies," with its noble open- 
ins:, in which he traced the course of the mathematical 
and physical sciences from " the time when the Chal- 
dean shepherd solaced the long hours of his nightly 
watch by tracing the apparent movements of the 
heavenly bodies, and the Egyptian priest or magis- 
trate, compelled, by the yearly overflow of the Nile, 
to mark out again the places of each proprietor, was 
led to the discovery of the elementary problems and 
propositions of geometry;" and the earnestness with 
which, in this fine address, he sought to impress upon 
his young hearers the necessity and value of toleration 
in all matters of opinion, which with him was not sim- 
ply inculcating a precept, for it was illustrated by the 
example of his own life; and his discourse in 1836, 
before Union College, " The Advantages and Dangers 
of the American Scholar," which may still be read 
with interest and instruction for its admirable com- 



58 

parison of tlie advantages and disadvantages which 
our republican institutions and forms of society ex- 
ercise upon the vocation of literary men. 

In 1838 he was elected to the State Senate, in 
which he served four years. It was then a body com- 
bining legislative and judicial functions, the members 
of which, in addition to forming a cooperative branch 
of the Legislature, sat also as a Court of Errors, to 
review the decisions of the Supreme Court and the 
Court of Chancery. Of his legislative labors, my 
limits will allow me only to refer to his masterly 
speech upon the reform of our judicial system, a speech 
which gave the death-blow to our Court of Chancery. 
It exhibits how profoundly he had studied our judi- 
cial system, and that of England and of other coun- 
tries ; how fully he understood their defects, and how 
clearly he comprehended the improvements that could 
be made. It will suffice to say, that some of the most 
valuable changes adopted by the Constitutional Con- 
ventions of 1846 and 1868 were suggested in this 
speech ; and I may add that our system would have 
been more harmonious and perfect had they followed 
his sagacious advice in some other features. 

In the Court of Errors he occupied from the be- 
ginning a commanding position. In the first case that 
was argued after he became a member of the Court, 



59 

Sdlttis vs. Everett, he delivered the leading opinion 
upon a most embarrassing and difficult question of 
comniercial law, an opinion frequently cited with ap- 
probation by judges, and followed in other States and 
in England. In the one hundred and seven cases de- 
cided while he was a member of the Court, he wrote 
opinions in seventy-one, an unusual proportion when 
the importance and difficulty of the questions are con- 
sidered that come before a court of last resort. These 
opinions, which were perspicuously and elegantly writ- 
ten, were not simply his conclusions, but elaborate 
judgments, founded on the closest investigations of the 
questions submitted, the most careful and exhaustive 
examination of authorities, and a practical, comprehen- 
sive, and familiar acquaintance with legal rules and 
principles, even those of the most technical kind. It 
was, as it might well be, a matter of astonishment that 
a man who had never sat before in a court of justice — 
who never argued or tried a cause for a client in a 
court in his life — should at once take such a position 
as this in the highest judicial tribunal of the State, 
and hold it during the entire period that he continued 
to be a member of it. In fact, he was the controlling 
power, for, whenever the Chancellor differed from him, 
he invariably carried the Court, and the weight that 
was attached to his opinions may be inferred from the 



60 

fact that, during the four years that he served, it is 
only in three instances that his vote is found recorded 
with the judges who voted in the minority. 1 

Throughout his life he had been a diligent student 
of Shakespeare, and upon his quitting the Senate he 

1 The opinions be delivered will be found from vols. xx. to xxvi. of 
"Wendell's Reports ; and tbat some estimate may be formed of their 
extent and value, I will briefly enumerate some of tbe most important, 
viz. : His learned opinion in Thompson vs. The People, upon tbe true 
nature of franchises in tins country, tbe right to construct bridges over 
navigable streams, and tbe limits of tbe writ of quo warranto. His 
exhaustive examination of tbe whole structure of our State and Federal 
Government, in Delafield vs. The State of Indiana, upon the question 
whether a citizen of this State could maintain an action against one of 
the States of the Union. His admirable exposition of the reasons upon 
which the doctrine of prescription, or rights established by custom and 
long usage, is founded, in Post vs. Pearsall. On the interpretation of 
technical legal terms in Lovett vs. Pell. His admirable survey of tbe 
whole law of marine insurance, and of the principles upon which it 
rests, in the American Insurance Company vs. Bryan. The right which 
the owners of the adjoining soil have in the beds of rivers, involving a 
lengthy examination of the law of navigable rivers and fresh-water 
streams, in HempshalVs case ; a most masterly opinion, in which the 
whole Court concurred. His opinion in Smith vs. Acker, in which he 
carried the Court against the Chancellor, and overturned all the pre- 
vious decisions of the Supreme Court, on the right of a jury, upon an 
uncontradicted state of facts, to decide whether there was or not a 
fraudulent intent in a mortgage of personal property, the Supreme 
Court having uniformly held tbat the question of fraudulent intent, 



CI 

undertook, at the request of the Messrs. Harper, to 
edit a new edition of the poet's works. To this task 
he applied himself with great assiduity and devoted 
to it three years. It was completed in 1847, in three 

upon an undisputed state of facts, was a question of law for the judge 
and not for the jury. His controlling opinion in the great case of 
Alice Lispenard, upon the amount of mental capacity necessary to make 
a will, affecting an immense amount of property in the city of New 
York. Upon the law of personal trusts, in Darling vs. Rogers. Of 
joint 1 -ankiiig corporations, in Warner vs. Beers; of partnership, in 
Vernon vs. The Manhattan Company. On the right of an advocate to 
maintain an action for his fees, in Stephens vs. Adams. Upon the law 
of the delegation of trusts, in Lyon vs. Jerome. Upon the fraudulent 
hypothecation of vessels and the obligation of bottomry bonds, in Cole 
vs. Whiter an opinion of great length and of great ability. His opinion 
maintaining the power of the Chancellor to compel the payment of 
where there is no adequate remedy at law, in Durant vs. The 
Supervisors of Albany. Upon the law of fire insurance, in The Mayor 
of New York vs. Pentz. The law of libel, in Ryckman vs. Delavan. 
Upon erasures in deeds and instruments under seal, in Brown vs. Kim- 
bal. His exposition of the whole law of lien, iu Faile vs. White, and 
his opinion upon the liability of a city to pay for a building which 
was blown up by order of the authorities to stop a conflagration, in 
Stone vs. The Mayor of New York. In Hoe vs. Acker, the Court of 
Errors afterward qualified their previous decision ; and, in the great 
case of Alice Lispenard, the correctness of Mr. Verplanck's conclusion 
has been doubted. With these two exceptions, however, so far as I 
know, the soundness of his numerous opinions has never been ques- 
tioned. 



62 

large volumes, and was from its literary merit, its pic- 
torial embellishments, and the perfection of its typo- 
graphical execution, the best edition of Shakespeare 
that had appeared in this country. Its chief value as 
an edition lies in the care Mr. Verplanck bestowed 
upon the text ; in the light thrown by his notes upon 
many obscure passages, which he was enabled to do 
from his extensive read in <* and his thorough kuowl- 
edge of the political and legal history of England, 
and in a judicious selection, from the whole range 
of Shakespearian literature, of such critical observa- 
tion as would lead to a better understanding of the 
plays, a clearer conception of the characters, and a 
fuller appreciation of the poet's genius. No one, un- 
less he is very familiar with the subject, would get 
from the work itself a knowledge of the precise ex- 
tent or value of Mr. Verplanck's labors, for his own 
observations, he says, are sometimes incorporated with 
the remarks of others, and sometimes given in separate 
notes ; modestly observing that he had not felt enough 
of the pride of authorship to designate any thing of 
his own by his name or any peculiar mark. He did 
little in the way of conjectural emendation. If, he 
says, in one of his notes, the safe rule of endeavor, 
ing to understand the original text, instead of guess- 
ing w T hat the author ought to have written, had been 



63 

adopted, we should have been saved volumes of com- 
mentary, and it is his judicious adherence to this 
rule that renders the edition, in my judgment, so valu- 
able. He remodelled Collier's life of the poet, and 
wrote an introduction to each play, in which,, in addi- 
tion to many admirable observations upon the separate 
plays, he bestowed much study and thought to deter- 
mine the time or periods in which they were suc- 
cessively produced, his object being to trace the prog- 
iv bs of Shakespeare's taste and experience; or, to use 
his own lanscuasje, " to follow out, through each sue- 
cessive change, the luxuriant growth of his poetic 
faculty and comic power, and the still nobler expan- 
sion of the moral wisdom, the majestic contemplation, 
the terrible energy, the matchless fusion of the impas- 
sioned with the philosophical, that distinguished the 
matured mind of the author of Hamlet, Lear, and Mac- 
beth." It is much to be regretted that the plates of 
this excellent edition were shortly afterward destroyed 
by fire. Being a very costly work, it was not repro- 
duced, and it consequently never became as exten- 
sively known as it deserved to be. 

It now remains but to enumerate what he did, in 
his capacity as a private citizen, for public objects. He 
was t< >r more than fifty years a trustee of the Society Li- 
brary ; for forty-four years a regent of the University of 



04 

the State of New York, requiring his personal attend- 
ance twice a year at its sessions in Albany ; for twenty- 
six years he was a member of the vestry of Trinity 
Church, and was at his death one of the two church- war- 
dens, a position involving the care and management of 
the enormous property of that great religious corpora- 
tion; for twenty -four years he was president of the 
Board of Emigration, a public trust of the most im- 
portant and onerous character, to which he attended 
with the most scrupulous fidelity up to last week 
of his life ; for many years he was a governor of the 
New York Hospital, and a director of the New York 
Life Insurance Company ; and was one of the managers 
of the Manhattan Club, and the first vice-jDresident of the 
New York Historical Society. All of these positions 
he held at the time of his death ; to which it must be 
added that he had been for many years a trustee of 
the Public School Society, an institution no longer in 
existence ; a trustee for several years of Columbia 
College, and had been vice-president of the American 
Academy of Fine Arts, the institution which preceded 
and gave rise to the present National Academy of 
Design. He was at first the usual chairman, and after 
its charter the president, of the Century Club for 
seventeen years. His connection with these institu- 
tions was not like that of many who merely give the 



63 

countenance of their names, but he attended to their 
affairs with the exactness, punctuality, and method of 
a merchant. 

He did little, if any thing, during his long life, to 
aid public objects by pecuniary assistance. I have 
never seen or heard of his name attached to a volun- 
tary subscription for such a purpose. It was a great 
defect in a man so accomplished and otherwise so pub- 
lic-spirited, and was the more marked in a city where 
pecuniary liberality, for public objects, is a distinguish- 
ing characteristic of its citizens. Clinton charired him 
with avarice. This was scarcely just, for he was not 
a man who had made the accumulation of money 
or property a leading object of life. He was con- 
tent with the fortune he had inherited, which was sup- 
posed, during his life, to be large, but which after his 
death appears to have been much exaggerated. He mav 
have been parsimonious; but he was not avaricious, 
nor in any way mercenary, for he gave his time and 
his intellect for years, as has been shown, to public 
institutions, and public labors, frequently of an exact- 
ing nature, where he neither received nor sought for 
compensation. 

Finally, when it is considered that he was for years 
an efficient manager of institutions, eleemosynary, finan- 
cial, educational, municipal, and religious; that he had 



6Q 

been an active politician, a legislator, and a statesman ; 
that lie was an eminent jurist, an able theologian, an 
acute literary critic, a satirical poet, an exquisite prose 
writer, and a scholar of vast and varied attainments, 
it will be felt that I have not overestimated in saying 
that he was the most distinguished of the descendants 
of the founders of New York. The appreciation of 
his talents and services, the consciousness that a great 
citizen had departed, were shown in the character of 
the men who filled Trinity Church upon the day of 
his funeral, and this voluntary tribute of respect, at 
the busy hour of noon, in this busy metropolis, was 
a demonstrative and public proof of the estimate 
formed in his native city of his life and character. 



67 



Mr. Gouklie, next addressing the meeting, said : 

Me. President and Fellow-Members of the " Cen- 
tury : " 

I have accepted with much diffidence the compli- 
mentary invitation of your Board of Management to 
offer some remarks on the character of our friend and 
associate, the late Hon. Gulian C. Verplanck. 

I do not propose to do more on this occasion than 
to present some of my reminiscences of his life. His 
eulogy will be written by a skilful pen, and by one 
who knows his claims upon the respectful regard of 
his countrymen for his accomplishments and learning, 
and for the services, through a long and useful life, he 
has rendered to society. 

It has been the custom heretofore in this Associa- 
tion, on the decease of a fellow-member, to offer some 
tribute of respect to his memory ; and for this reason 
your committee have thought it fitting and proper 
that the name and character of our venerable and ven- 
erated friend should not be permitted to pass away 
from our remembrance without the record of some 
testimonial of the claims he had upon our gratitude 
and respect. I am permitted to say that on another 



68 

occasion such a record will be made which will magnify 
his claims to our respectful veneration. Other gen- 
tlemen will address you this evening, and will ade- 
quately supply the omissions I may make. My duty 
here calls only for a simple narrative, in which may be 
blended personal reminiscences, if not valuable to his- 
tory, yet, I hope, interesting to us, as connected with 
our associations with him in the gentle hours of his 
j)leasant life. 

ME. VERPLANCK AS A POLITICIAN. 

My acquaintance with Mr. Verplanck began in 
1834, while I was serving on the Young Men's Gen- 
eral Whig Committee, as delegate from the ward in 
which I lived. 

That committee established reading and conversa- 
tion rooms for its members and friends on the east side 
of Broadway, a few doors below Canal Street; and 
here, nightly, Mr. Verplanck was a visitor ; and here 
he met the most zealous supporters of Henry Clay, 
among whom were Hamilton Fish, our present Secre- 
tary of State, then a respected and rising young man, 
Willis Hall, and others, all ardent members of the 
Whig party at that time. I think it was then that Mr. 
Verplanck became acquainted with Horace Greeley, 
whose memory of the facts of our political history ex- 
cited his admiration. 



60 

I need not go into a detail of the duties and labors 
of that committee, connected as they were with the 
political events of the period. I will only add that it 
was among these young men that it was determined to 
put forward the name of Gulian C. Verplanck as a can- 
didate for the mayoralty of the city, in opposition to 
the Democratic candidate, Cornelius W. Lawrence. 
The history of that political contest is well known. 
The name of Mr. Verplanck was hailed with pride by 
the old residents of New York, who regarded him as a 
representative man of the early Dutch settlers of the 
city. He obtained many votes from the opposite par- 
ty on that account. 

Had Mr. Verplanck himself been as anxious as his 
friends were for his success, he could have triumphed. 
As it was, he lost the prize, I think, by less than two 
hundred majority for Mr. Lawrence. I do not think 
that Mr. Verplanck possessed those robust qualities so 
essential to success in a politician. When he did suc- 
ceed in any election, it was because of the high respect 
in which his character and name were held by all 
classes of his fellow-citizens ; and, when he failed, he 
exhibited no emotions of disaj)pomtnient or regret. 

I think he was too timid and cautious for an active 
politician. He was an amiable man. His equanimity 
was a marked feature in his character. He seldom or 



70 

never engaged in controversy, and disliked disputes. 
On many occasions lie was deficient in decision of 
opinion, although he very often maintained the opin- 
ions he had formed, from study and observation, with 
great firmness. He was tolerant of the opinions of 
others. I have had frequent occasions to criticise some 
of Mr. Verplanck' s views on political questions, and I 
must in justice say that he received opposing views 
with the tolerant spirit of a gentleman, although I was 
a much younger man, and had but little right to dis- 
agree with him. 

THE SKETCH CLUB. 

In the year 1842 I was elected a member of the 
Sketch Club, a society of literary men and artists, 
established, I believe, in 1820. This social institution 
is the parent of the " Century," as you know. Its 
members were prominent men in literature and art. 
In the list of the members were the names of William 
C. Bryant, Gulian C. Verplanck, Kobert C. Sands, 
Fitz-Greene Halleck, Henry and John Inman, A. B. 
Durand, John G. Chapman, Kobert W. Weir, and 
others who have achieved distinction among us, and 
have added honor to the intellectual character of the 
country by their works in literature and the fine arts. 

Mr. Verplanck was always an honored guest at our 



71 

fortnightly meetings, and contributed muck by the ful- 
ness and richness of his intellectual resources to the 
pleasant conversational intercourse of its members. 

I know of no man who so enjoyed these pleasant 
evenings. In old age he kept up with much vigor his 
fondness for the society of young men, whose freshness 
of information always had to him a perpetual charm, 
and renewed in his heart the suushine of earlier days. 

At these meetings we were frequently honored by 
the presence of distinguished strangers from various 
parts of our country and Europe, and I have had the 
pleasure and satisfaction of frequently listening to him 
on many subjects of literary and artistic interest, which 
he always illuminated by the rich stores of his memory. 

On one occasion Mr. Thackeray, who was present, 
seemed to be deeply interested in his conversation, and 
subsequently remarked to his friend Frederick S. Coz- 
zens: "He is a remarkable man; he is full of knowl- 
edge ; he is an honor to your country." 

These meetings were to Mr. Verplanck pleasant 
sources of intellectual recreation. 

At one of our meetings he read a very interesting 
paper, entitled " Garrick — his Portrait in New York ; 
its Artist and History." It was a letter addressed to 
Abraham M. Cozzens, giving him a history of a por- 
trait of Garrick, by Pine, a distinguished English 



72 

artist, which had been purchased from the collection 
of Philip Hone. 

The letter is valuable for its historic research and 
information, and for its extended and learned criticism 
on the character and acting of Garrick. Mr. Verplanck 
ends his interesting letter by saying: "If this long 
letter, with its shadowy remembrances, its rambling 
digressions, and its multifarious and probably not al- 
ways correct quotations, gives half as much amusement 
and gratification to you as it did to me in writing, by 
the scenes of memory it has recalled, I shall be fully 
satisfied." It is a scholarly production, and worthy of 
the accomplished pen of its author. 

Permit me to add, Pine came to this country in 
1785, with letters of introduction to General Washing- 
ton, who regarded him with great favor, " as one," as 
he wrote to his friend Judge Hopkinson, " who has 
discovered a friendly disposition to this country. 

This volume is but little known, as it was printed 
for private distribution. No one can read it without 
great admiration ; not only for its style of composition 
but for its extensive knowledge of the subject which 
it treated. I wish it could be reprinted and placed 
before the public eye. I may add here that Pine 
painted the portrait of General Washington. The 
author remarks : " It is in truth the least ideal and 



73 

the least heroic of all the portraits of the great man, 
m hether on canvas or in marble. Without the mili- 
tary grace and manly beauty of Trumbull's represen- 
tation of the Washington of the Revolution, or the in- 
tellectual majesty of the likenesses taken by Stuart 
and Houdon, at a later period of life, this portrait has 
a repose and simplicity quite in keeping with the 
character of its subject at the time, as the victorious 
veteran cheerfully settled down into the contented 
country gentleman." 

MR. YEEPLANCK AS A WETTER. 

Mr. Verplanck wrote also an introduction of sixty 
pages to a little volume printed by the " Century," de- 
scribing the ceremonies of the Twelfth Night celebra- 
tion in 1858, in these rooms. It is a valuable and 
interesting historical record of the various modes in 
which that festival was celebrated in many parts of 
Europe. One is surprised, in reading it, to see how 
much erudition and learning the author displayed — 
even on such a subject as this. His industry and re- 
search were remarkable. 

Every one is familiar with his " Historical Dis- 
courses," published in 1833, delivered by him on 
various occasions. They prove his masterly scholar- 

10 



74 

ship, and are valuable additions to the literature ot 
our country. 

His " Anniversary Discourse," delivered before the 
Historical Society in 1818, has been pronounced by 
competent authority a noble composition — one that 
would do honor to any scholar in America or Europe. 
His stirring and eloquent analysis of the character of 
that noble Christian and philanthropist, Las Casas, 
who came to this continent with Columbus on his sec- 
ond voyage, is as fine as any thing I know of in the 
range of my reading. Its indignant refutation of the 
charge brought against that great man, as the author 
of the introduction, on this continent, of negro slavery, 
is a noble illustration of the cultivated vigor of the 
author's mind when about thirty years of age. This 
discourse of our friend is a bright gem in American 
literature ; and, when we remember that it was written 
when he was comparatively a young man, we cannot 
fail to be surprised at the extent of his researches, pro- 
found judgment, and his skilful analysis of historic 
facts. 

There are several interesting papers of Mr. Ver- 
planck's printed in the Wine Press, a periodical pub- 
lished by his late friend, Frederick S. Cozzens. It is 
to be Loped that a complete collection of his works, 
including these minor papers, will soon be made.. 



75 

I may be permitted to introduce in this place some 
of the anecdotes he has related of his personal reminis- 
cences of the prominent men he had met in life. He 
venerated the intellect and character of his friend 
Albert Gallatin, who had occupied a distinguished po- 
sition in the councils of the nation. Mr. Gallatin's 
learning and curious knowledge of the language of the 
aborigines of our country, his far-reaching, statesman- 
like view of the true policy which would add to the 
greatness, power, and grandeur of the nation, and his 
estimable private qualities, were frequent themes of the 
admiring judgment and discrimination of our friend. 
When in Congress, he saw much of the social life of 
Washington City. He related to me, and a friend, in 
these rooms, an anecdote of John Kandolph, the eccen- 
tric member of Congress from Virginia, illustrating the 
precision of that man's memory. It was a social cus- 
tom of Judge McLean and his accomplished wife to 
invite to dinner any young member of Congress who 
made his first successful speech, or in any way distin- 
guished himself by the exhibition of more than usual 
ability. 

PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

At one time Mr. Verplanck was present at a dinner 
given to the Hon. Tristram Burgess, then just sent to 



76 

Congress from Rhode Island. John Randolph was 
also present. In the course of the entertainment Mrs. 
McLean jocosely asked Mr. Burgess if he was not "born 
about the time " Tristram Shandy " was published ? 
Mr. Randolph, without waiting for a reply from the 
party addressed, said " No ! " and then gave an account 
of the years in which the volumes of that work were 
printed — long intervals having elapsed between the 
publication of the several volumes. Mr. Verplanck ex- 
amined the subject afterward, and found Randolph 
strictly correct. 

At another time he related the story of his meeting, 
at the dinner-table of a friend in Philadelphia, the ex- 
King of Spain — Joseph Bonaparte — and Grouchy, who 
had been charged with treason by the emperor, in not 
preventing the junction of Blucher's army with that of 
Wellington, at Waterloo. Mr. Verplanck remarked : 
"It was an ill-assorted dinner-party." The ex-king 
was taciturn, and exhibited some embarrassment. 
They did not speak to each other, and Grouchy took 
an early opportunity to depart, after which the ex- 
king became very entertaining in his conversation, and 
gave an account of his kingly rule in Spain, remarking, 
with a pleasant smile, that he " obeyed all the orders 
that were sent to him from Paris." 

I repeat these anecdotes, irrelevant as they may ap- 



77 

pear, as illustrating his fondness for even the minutest 
details of history, with which his memory was so abun- 
dantly stored. 

It is not necessary at this time to allude but for a 
moment to his services in the various public institu- 
tions with which he had been connected for more than 
half a century. 

They are well known to you all, and to his fellow- 
townsmen. It seemed essential to his mental and 
physical health that he should be constantly occupied. 
His interest in many of our public charities, and also 
in various institutions connected with science and learn- 
ing, even long after the shadows of age had fallen upon 
him, was never abated, and he continued almost to the 
last day of his life to be as active and persevering in 
that interest as he had been in the days of the full 
vigor of his early manhood. Few of our fellow-citizens 
have carried into declining life more energy and con- 
stancy in every duty which they may have been called 
on to fulfil than our departed friend. 

Mr. Verplanck's conversation was enriched by ex- 
tensive knowledge and observation. The fertility of 
his mind and the abundant stores of his memory ren- 
dered him a most agreeable and instructive conrpanion. 
You all remember the form and beauty of his face. 
His portrait, by our fellow-member Daniel Huntington, 



78 

gives, to niy mind, the best representation of the calm 
dignity of his character I have seen. The " silver livery 
of advised age " which crowned his noble brow, the 
freshness of his noble complexion — almost youthful — 
give a charm to this portrait which will ever interest 
those who knew him, and also be interesting to those 
who may read his history and life in after-times. 

I will not detain you any longer. I have only at- 
tempted to revive in your memories a few of the dis- 
tinguished traits of the character of our friend, and 
have, at the same time, endeavored to avoid obtrusion 
upon your generous patience. 

He has passed from among us, who have known 
him so long and so well. We have lost a venerated 
friend. His learning and accomplishments shed endur- 
ing lustre on his name and memory, as also upon our 
" Century," of which he was so long a faithful and 
honored member. 



Mr. Henry C. Dorr, following, said : 

The name of Mr. Verplanck is associated with the 
earliest days of the "Century," in its first humble 
lodgment in Broadway. Its narrow apartments, in 
an upper story, were more than sufficient for its evening 
assemblages — when clubs were not, as yet, popular in 



79 

New York. It was long before it was fairly entitled 
to its name. Its forty or fifty members were seldom 
present save at its monthly meetings. Scarcely an en- 
graving adorned its walls, save the "Transfiguration," 
its earliest acquisition. Its continuance was by no 
means assured, for artists and literary men, in those 
days, sought more private and domestic assemblages. 
Some of the foremost among them, however, did not 
despair of its fortunes, and at length raised it to sta- 
bility and success. Few of these now remain among 
us. 

Among the varied resources of those who contrib- 
uted to the attractiveness and j)ermanence of the " Cen- 
tury," Mr. Verplanck had much that was peculiarly 
his own. He was thoroughly conversant with local 
history. In his early days he was intimately associated 
with men whose recollections reached far back into 
the colonial past. His family had numbered men of 
social prominence, who were stored with traditions of 
the royal province of New York. Ancestral feeling 
inclined him to study its records and to treasure up 
the anecdotes told around the firesides of other days. 
Before his ancient homestead, British regiments had 
marched, on the way to Quebec. In the first decade 
of this century he knew many who had partaken in 
the strifes with Sir Charles Hardy, admiral and gov- 



80 

ernor, about royal revenue — who had takeu oaths of 
allegiance to the Crown, in offices of every grade — 
who had seen rival landlords, accommodating politi- 
cians, eager expectants, offering their support to the 
royal governors, in hoj>e of patents of woods, and 
waters, and salt-springs. In his early days, the society 
had scarcely grown old which remembered the lively 
garrison town — its private theatricals, managed by 
young officers, fresh from London life — its ceremonious 
court circle, its reproduction of English manners and 
ideas. Unfused nationalities were still struggling for 
preeminence. Rivalries, begun in the colonial time, 
were not yet ended. The patroons still kept undi- 
vided their ancient manors by the Hudson ; the town 
was full of memorials of the architectural taste of Hol- 
land ; and Low Dutch sermons were still preached to 
the descendants of the first settlers of New Amster- 
dam. Greater than all these, there were still in pub- 
lic life the men whose intellectual resources had ren- 
dered the chief assistance in forming the Government 
of the United States. Their extraordinary powers, 
stimulated by the fervor of revolution, had produced 
at last the heroic age of New York. It came a century 
after the founders, and lasted for one generation. All 
these — Hamilton, Jay, Morris, Livingston — then in the 
full maturity of their years and wisdom, Mr. Verplanck 



81 

had peculiar opportunity to know. Out of these tra- 
ditions and memories of his youth, Mr. Verplanck 
brought ample stores of anecdote and history to en- 
liven the evenings of the " Century." His singularly 
accurate and retentive memory, and the quiet humor 
of his narrative, furnished some of the chief attrac- 
tions of our early meetings. 

But Mr. Verplanck's studies in American history 
had a wider range. Through his connection with one 
of its historical families, he felt a lively interest in 
the New England of former days. His maternal grand- 
father, Dr. Samuel Johnson, of Stratford, Conn. (D. C. 
L., Oxon.), was an influential member of the conven- 
tion which formed the American Constitution. Mr. 
Verplanck learned from him to appreciate the prin- 
ciples and social habits of divers sections of the coun- 
try. The early writers of New England he had studied 
with remarkable freedom from local prejudices. He 
was familiar with its chroniclers, when few, out of 
Massachusetts or Connecticut, had essayed the task of 
reading; them. In his historical discourses — written 
at a time when the enmities of neio-hborins; States 
were far stronger than at present — Mr. Verplanck en- 
deavored to persuade the citizens of rival common- 
wealths to a more candid estimate of each other's 
founders. His ancestral feeling led him to the study 



82 

of the schohirs and civilians of the greater days of 
Holland. He always referred to their writings with 
a just and honorable pride. The great Dutch Bible, 
the best monument of the language, he steadily main- 
tained to be superior to any version of modern times. 
In such pursuits he has left few successors among us. 

I will not trespass upon the province of others, by 
speaking of Mr. Verplanck's legal acquirements, his 
classical scholarship), his accurate and comprehensive 
learning, his knowledge of English literature, espe- 
cially of the elder dramatists. He had studied these 
when he was, in this country, nearly alone in the pur- 
suit. Here, too, his ready and minute recollection 
made him master of whatever he had once appro pri- 
ated, and his kindliness placed it freely at the disposal 
of others. Few knew better than he where topics of 
learning were handled, or passages were to be found, 
which had escaped the researches of other men. 

All these studies were promoted by European 
travel (in his earlier days, infrequent), during which 
he enjoyed unusual advantages of converse with some 
of the foremost university men, lawyers, and artists, of 
England and the Continent. He had copious reminis- 
cences of his meeting with Dr. Parr at Cambridge, and 
with some of the most eminent judges of Westminster 



83 

Hall. Travel was not with liim the mere relaxation 
of a pleasure-seeker. 

His observation of characters, developed in every 
school of culture, contributed to the formation of a 
broad and enlightened mind. 

As years went on, and the generation passed away 
which had furnished the recollections of his youth, 
Mr. Verplanck became himself no unnoticed actor in 
public life. In Congress he wasted no hours in fruit- 
less oratory — nor was he a mere spectator of the pro- 
ceedings, casting his vote at the dictation of other men. 
He was an active and an independent participant in 
legislation. He himself regarded his service to liter- 
ature, by his amendment to the law of copyright, as 
also his best service to the country, and recurred to it 
with higher satisfaction than to the transient notoriety 
of the chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means. 

At Washington, as in New York, Mr. Verplanck had 
no need to seek for the society of men eminent either 
in politics or letters. His own position and acquire- 
ments brought him at once into associations with the 
foremost among them. Throughout life he was familiar 
with the most eminent of his contemporaries, scholars, 
theologians, artists, critics, diplomatists, and j>oliticians. 
If he gained any thing from them, he imparted a full 
equivalent in return. 



84 

Mr. Verplanck's acquirements had nothing of the 
spirit of a dry antiquarianism. Although he loved to 
dwell upon the recollections of which he had such am- 
ple store, he was no mourner over a dead past. His 
cheerful recognition that it was beyond recall, only led 
him to a warm and practical interest in all that belongs 
to the present. He was no recluse student, who had 
become hopeless of his own age, in fruitless admiration 
of an age gone by. He was familiar with the strata of 
fossil remains, Dutch, French, English, Scotch, over 
which modern New York has been built up. While 
he aided its Historical Society in reverently preserving 
the remains of its ancient periods, he looked yet more 
earnestly for an American New York of the future. In 
this spirit he worked silently and without observation 
or praise — as a regent of the university, for the im- 
provement of the standards of scholarship in colleges 
and schools — as a member of many boards and corpo- 
rations — for the protection of seamen and immigrants 
from rapacity and fraud — for the right administration 
of public charities, and hospitals, and asylums, for the 
shelter and education of friendless children. He held 
many public offices. It did not trouble him that they 
were without salary, and, too often, without thanks. 

All these contributions of learning and experience 
— of topics old and new, of the past and present — Mr. 



85 

Verplanck brought to our Society iu its earliest years, 
when his powers were in full vigor, and his genial hu- 
mor and capacity for enjoyment were as yet undecayed. 
The event of almost the first week of our meetings 
was the death of Chancellor Kent. It called forth Mr. 
Verplanck' s recollections of the bar of New York, when 
he had listened to Hamilton as its leader, and of the 
judicial celebrities of two generations gone by. This 
was the beginning of a series of historical reminiscences, 
continued through many years, which would have con- 
ferred celebrity on any one who could have published 
them as his own memorial of his times. These were 
not trivial, or idle, but preserved sayings or occurrences 
which illustrated the first half-century of our national 
life, and pertained to men who had acted, or who were 
still acting, no undistinguished part in American his- 
tory, or who were eminent in letters or in art. They 
who joined in these conversations of our winter even- 
ings did not fail to observe that his wide experience 
of men had taught to Mr. Verplanck no lessons of nar- 
rowness or misanthropy. He had learned tolerance of 
other men's opinions, and exercised in turn the right 
of " sj)eaking his own mind," without troubling him- 
self with the inquiry whether his judgment coincided 
with the popular opinion of the hour. Though he had 
shown, in earlier days, a perception of the ludicrous 



86 

side of character and life, which (had he chosen to cul- 
tivate it) would have made him one of the first satiri- 
cal writers of his time, yet there was no strain of un- 
kindliness or depreciation in his mention of other men. 
He had seen too much of the selfishness and corruption 
of two generations to indulge in despair of the pres- 
ent, but had always a kindly and charitable judgment 
of the frailties and failings of his contemporaries. 

I know not whether Mr. Verplanck ever committed 
to writing any of his stores of anecdote or narrative. 
It is to be regretted if things which were so familiar 
seemed to him too trivial for preservation, for the gos- 
sip of one age becomes the historical learning of an- 
other. In view of the loss of these, as of other varied 
acquisitions of many years, we may appreciate the la- 
ment of Lord Coke for a departed luminary of West- 
minster Hall : " When a learned man (and such an 
one is long in the making) dieth, much learning dieth 
with him." 

When, at last, withdrawn from social enjoyment, 
Mr. Verplanck continued, while any strength remained, 
in the discharge of duty to those charitable institu- 
tions over many of which he had watched from their 
beginnings. The scholar of fourscore years pursued 
with unabated interest the studies of his youth. In 
Biblical learning, which had been one of the occupa- 



87 

tions of his mature life, lie continued Lis researches to 
the last. But a few days before Lis death, tlie great 
texts of the Greek Testament were spread upon his 
library-table, all open at the same passage in the gos- 
pel of St. John. With critical apparatus of the highest 
authority, he was pursuing a diligent comparison with 
the readings of the Sinaitic MS. This was the last 
and fitting occupation of a life now waning to its close, 
during which political controversies had not abated 
the love of learning, or laborious scholarship created 
a disinclination for the active fulfilment of public 
trusts. 

Dr. Haight spoke at length of Mr. Verplanck's at- 
tainments as a theologian, and of his services to the 
Episcopal Church. 

Dr. Bellows then addressed the meeting;: 

Mr. President: 

It seems almost superfluous, after the full and elo- 
quent testimonies already paid to our departed father 
and friend, to offer here any further tribute to his 
memory. Yet there are one or two gleanings from 
the field of his full life, which may not inappropriately 
be gathered by an humbler hand, and laid upon the 
bursting sheaf already heaped so high. 



88 

Men are to be valued for what they are as well as 
for what they purposely accomplish ; and gifts which 
owe more to God's own original bestowment than to 
the improvement which is made of them, should be 
gratefully acknowledged, if not in praise of their re- 
cipient, to the glory of Him who has illustrated His 
own greatness by the endowments He gives His crea- 
tures. There were a weight and fulness in Mr. Ver- 
planck's nature which none who approached him could 
have failed to recognize — a variety and richness, a 
breadth and mass of being, which distinguished him 
from the ordinary, or even the select, class of his con- 
temporaries, and made his presence ever a central force 
and an attractive governing power. I do not speak of 
what is commonly called character, so much as of the 
sum of his being. It was impossible not to feel, where 
he was, that an element of thought, and will, and weight, 
and force, existed, which could not be left out in any cal- 
culation of effects, but must be considered and respected. 
How he would think or feel could not be predicted, 
but no conclusion could be reached which, silently or 
by conscious or unconscious influence, his personality 
did not affect. This essential and substantial power 
always commands peculiar respect, and legitimately 
affects men's judgments and conduct. It can no more 
be escaped than the tides can escape the attraction of 



89 

the inoon ; and Mr. Verplanck could be a member of 
no community, assembly, club, or committee, iu which 
his weight did uot sensibly and greatly influence, 
whether by furtherance or restraint, all its movements. 

But while Nature had endowed him thus largely 
and generously with intellect and comprehension, with 
will and purpose, with various faculties, and with what 
marks all the richest natures, powers usually exclusive 
of each other, or deemed self-contradictory, his educa- 
tion, backed by his native proclivities, had given to 
his culture, tastes, and breeding, a bulk and range of 
attainments, a variety and scope of tastes and interests, 
which made him an illustrious example of mental man- 
hood and completeness. 

We have scholars who are not thinkers, and think- 
ers who are not scholars, and scholars and thinkers 
both who are not men of affairs, and men of affairs who 
are scholars and thinkers too, but are not men of wide 
intellectual sympathies and aesthetic tastes. But Mr. 
Verplanck — lawyer, judge, professor, politician, states- 
man, man of taste, man of business, man of economic 
and practical wisdom and activity — had in full assim- 
ilation and roundness all the accomplishments and 
tastes which a few myriad-minded men of all ages have 
been distinguished for. A layman, he had the knowl- 
edge and tastes of a professional theologian ; a lawyer, 

19 



90 

lie had the sagacity and skill of a financier ; a politi- 
cian, lie had the meditative habits of a scholar; a man 
of business, he had the tastes of an artist ; busiest of 
men, he had the mental hospitality of a man of leisure ; 
an old man, he had the self-reliance of a man in middle 
life ; far past the ordinary bounds of human existence, 
he kept a taste for the society of the young, and en- 
tered as an equal into the discussions or conversations 
of the rising generation. This many-sidedness and 
richness, this interblending of the various professions 
and the different seasons of life in his personality, 
made him to me one of the most remarkable of all the 
men I have known, and one of the most instructive 
and commanding of our American citizens. Strong 
and fixed in his own convictions, he was able, by his 
breadth of intellect and knowledge, to respect great 
differences of opinion, and to discuss with wisdom and 
freshness things with which he had no direct sympa- 
thy. And what do we need in America so much as 
men of this class — we, whose intellectual vigor is so 
raw, so commonly dissociated from positive and pro- 
found learning, and so little refined by taste and 
filtered through scholarship and meditation? Men 
who have explored the past are the only safe guides 
through the present to the future. Reverence for hu- 
manity includes respect for what humanity has hived 



01 

up by its past labors, and we are the perpetual victims 
of the hasty conclusions of vigorous ignorance and au- 
dacious speculation. 

Mr. Verplanck was a singular illustration of the 
union of the scholar and thinker with the man of af- 
fairs. Nothing that immediately and largely affected 
the interests of this community and countiy was for- 
eign to his thoughts, or failed to command his prac- 
tical cooperation. It is almost a miracle that, after 
sixty, he began a career as Commissioner of Emigration, 
one of the most new, perplexing, and important, any 
citizen could enter upon, which occupied largely the 
remaining twenty-four years of his life. When we 
consider that, of the thirty-odd millions of our country- 
men, only about ten are born of pure American stock, 
and that twenty millions are either foreign-born or the 
children of foreigners, we can estimate the importance 
of the Board that held the great floodgate through 
which so mighty a tide has pressed into the country, 
and made the entrance beneficial and humane for immi- 
grants, and safe for the American people. There is no 
monument which the honored president of this Board, 
from 1848 to his death in 1870, could more reasonably 
have desired than that he was able to behold in his 
lifetime in the erection of the "Verplanck State Emi- 
grant Asylum" on Ward's Island. When we consider 



92 

that we are already, and are still more truly to be- 
come, a cosmopolitan nation, draining the blood of 
Europe, Asia, and Africa, into the veins of America, 
every thing connected with immigration, its principles 
and methods, and its relations to the national life and 
welfare, becomes of transcendent importance ; and Mr. 
Kapp, in his late thorough and learned report, has un- 
wittingly published a eulogy of his friend and co- 
worker which no set praises of ours can equal in solid- 
ity or endurance. 

Finally, Mr. Verplanck was an illustrious example 
of the immortality of the thinking and the active 
spirit. Age seemed to have no power to quench his 
ardor or impair his usefulness. He was his own phy- 
sician, and fended off disease by the vitality of his 
ever-earnest mind. He had drunk of the fountain of 
youth, in committing himself early and late to the 
companionship of large and serious thoughts and pur- 
poses. If Coleridge denned genius correctly when he 
pronounced it the power of carrying our youth with 
us into maturity, Mr. Verplanck had it. He began 
his most active life when men commonly end theirs. 
You, sir, none better, can tell us how literary occu- 
pation and interest in public affairs renew the springs 
ot life ; what solaces in bereavement, and what pro- 
tection against decay, ardent studies and scholarly 



93 

achievements furnish, after the usual term of life has 
been reached ; how the " Juvenilis Mundi " can reani- 
mate the wasted energies of a Gladstone ; Alaska and 
Mexico can recruit the statesman's powers, after the 
helm of state has escaped from the hand that held it 
in the wildest convulsions of the storm ; how Homer, 
singing in English accents that would have deceived 
his own ear for harmony, and come back to him as 
the honest echo of his own strains, can beguile the 
hours of the septuagenarian, and make all forget in 
him every thing associated with age, except the love 
and reverence that are its due. And surely, at eighty- 
four, Mr. Verplanck taught us all the essential yonth of 
the living mind ; for there was nothing antiquated or 
sear in that ivy-green, its leaves still fresh enough to 
weave chaplets for others, and fragrant and vital 
enough to crown his own head with bays. 

Dr. VrNTON concluded the addresses in these words : 

Mr. President: 

There are three aspects of public men who, like 
Mr. Verplanck, have filled the public eye. 

The first is that of popularity. But popularity is 
a bubble, which a breath makes and a breath destroys. 
Mr. Verplanck was not a popular man ; or, if at times 



94 

lie was lifted up by the people, he soared aloft but 
a little while, and was made to experience the collapse 
due to partisan contentions and to tickle partisan ca- 
prices. 

The second aspect, and a better one, is that of a man 
of reputation. Reputation takes an important part of 
a lifetime to establish, and requires almost as long a 
time to demolish. Mr. Verplanck's reputation will out- 
live many generations. It has been grandly set forth 
by the admiring annalist who has charmed us to- 
night by unrolling the scroll of the past, and pointing 
out what was not familiarly known, while illustrating 
what was emblazoned in the history of New York, 
where the name and services of the venerable man are, 
as it were, " graven with an iron pen and lead in the 
rock forever." 

Mr. Verplanck's reputation as a private friend, and 
as a member in the fellowship of the " Century," and 
as a companion in the paths of literature and the 
walks of out-of-door society, you yourself, Mr. Presi- 
dent, and other gentlemen, have lovingly sketched and 
reproduced to-night, as visibly as yonder portrait 
(draped now with mourning, but beaming with famil. 
iar tints of lifelike expression) both reanimates our 
memory of the man and starts afresh our tears at his 
departure. 



95 

The third aspect of a man is his character. Charac- 
ter can hardly be denominated an aspect. It is some- 
thing hidden. It is the sacred reality within the veil 
of the temple of the body. It is the soul. It is the 
man himself. 

Character is known only to the Divine Omniscience 
and the human conscience. 

Many a one — indeed, all men — enjoy or suffer the 
vicissitudes of popularity and reputation, whose char- 
acter the world never discovers. 

If the high maxim of heathen ethics, " Know thy- 
self, 1 ' prompted to the deepest introversion, so, to know 
another than thyself, is a challenge that baffles our 
keenest scrutiny. 

Yet the person who best may know tlie character 
of another (next to that other self which holy wed- 
lock makes one with us) is tlie priest and pastor, to 
whom may be confided the innermost thoughts and 
emotions of the soul. 

It is this intimate spiritual communion that some- 
what reveals the real man. It is the entering within 
the veil to the presence at the Holy of Holies. 

To very few of such pastors are vouchsafed 
glimpses of the entire character of another, because of 
the breadth and the depth and the height of the immor- 
tal object. They can discern, however, types, signifi- 



96 

cant types, of character, which indicate the man in his 
inner being. 

It is not my purpose to dwell on the value or charm 
of this free, spiritual intimacy of a pastor and the 
members of his flock ; but only to say that it has been 
my office, for the eleven years last past, to be the pas- 
tor of our deceased brother ; to see him continually in 
his place in Trinity Church ; to have converse with 
him on personal concerns of the loftiest spiritual im- 
port ; to administer to him the blessed sacrament of 
our Lord's body and blood, and to receive from him the 
tenderest assurances of love and respect, which I hold 
dear among the treasured memories of my ministry. 

Our only written correspondence are the notes ac- 
companying the presentation of the photograph of his 
portrait by Huntington, which he regarded as his best ; 
and which, from that time to this, has adorned my 
library, and shall ever remain, while I live, as the 
sweet and pleasant, though mournful, memento of his 
benignant dignity of form and of character. 

There are two anecdotes which, without violating 
confidence, I may relate, as evincing Mr. Verplanck's 
mental and spiritual disposition. 

The first illustrates his self-reliance. The habits of 
his life marked his independence. When, most reluc- 
tantly, he conceded to his great age the necessity of a 



valet, he would .scarcely ever tolerate his services 
about Lis person; and, when the faithful serving-man 
came to dress him, the master admitted him to the 
chamber only after he had dressed himself. 

The second illustrates his piety, his filial piety, and 
his piety as a child of God. 

Within a few days of his sudden decease, and 
while the lingering flame of life shot upward strong 
and shining, Mr. Verplanck expressed the intention 
to go down to St. Paul's Chapel to receive the holy 
communion on the approaching " Feast of the Annun- 
ciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary." 

This is the Church's festival of the Incarnation of 
her Lord. It is the day commemorated as the time of 
the archangel's annunciation, that the Holy Thing to 
be born in our flesh was the Son of God. It is the 
ancient secular beginning of the year. It is the day, 
still, when leases are terminated and fresh plans are 
made for the tillage of the earth. To an old-fashioned 
churchman, it is a great day and a holy day. 

Mr. Verplanck determined to celebrate the day in 
spiritual communion with the Church. 

But he was informed that his precarious health 
would not permit the indulgence of his determination. 

He heard the tidings with evident disappointment. 
He struggled with himself to bear it patiently. And 



la 



98 

then he quietly told the particular reason why, among 
the general motives, he had been desirous of communi- 
cating at St. Paul's Chapel on the Feast of the Annun- 
ciation. 

It was there he was baptized, and (he believed) he 
was baptized on that holy day. He was reviving the 
memory of his father and his mother, and of his own 
childhood. The light of the nickering name of life 
was guiding him back, back to the tender embraces of 
loving hearts, brightening the scenes of infancy, irradi- 
ating the events of the morning of his days, where his 
soul, poising herself for departure from earth, to be 
carried by the angels into paradise, would fain start on 
the heavenward passage from the very font of his new 
birth as " a member of Christ, a child of God, and an 
inheritor of the kingdom of heaven." 

Mr. President, it is said that the human corpse of 
the old person changes from the aspect of decrepitude, 
or of sickness, or of age, gradually passing through its 
appearance in middle life, until it reaches the look of 
childhood, which lingers a while, and then decay and 
corruption seize it. 

However this may be, it is certain that the soul of 
the aged man reverts, last of all, to his youth. Inter- 
mediate events are slighlly remembered and easily ef- 
faced. Events of middle life trample on one another, 



99 

and the march of our footsteps is obliterated to 
memory. But the fresh innocence of childhood and 
its experiences are fresh memories at the end of our 
days. And no wonder. The impressions of child- 
hood are printed on tender hearts, where they are 
deeper, because the heart is then most impressible; 
they are lasting, because they are deeper than all that 
follow them. 

Our departed brother kept the feast, not in the 
lower courts, but in the midst of the gathering of 
fathers, mothers, and children, in the " general as- 
sembly and church of the first-born, which are writ- 
ten in heaven," and amidst "the spirits of just men 
made perfect." 

Judge Van Vorst, in moving the adoption of the 
resolution for publication, spoke as follows: 

Mr. President : 

I cannot withhold an expression of my sense of ob- 
ligation to yourself, and to Judge Daly and the other 
gentlemen who have spoken this evening, for the faith- 
ful manner in which you have performed the import- 
ant duties of this occasion ; and, in saying this, I utter 
the sentiments, I am confident, of all present. 

The K Century " may now well mourn. This is the 



100 

greatest loss she lias yet sustained. Gulian C. Ver- 
planck, one of the founders, and the first president of 
the " Century," greatly honored the Association he so 
much loved, by his writings, his deeds, and his elevated 
character. His whole life, to its very close, at a great 
as:e, was full of useful thought and action. His inter- 
est was profound and unflagging in whatever concerned 
man or the improvement of society. 

" Nihil humani a me alienum puto," seemed to be 
the maxim of his life. 

He will always live in the great judgments which 
he delivered, when a State Senator, as a member of the 
Court for the Correction of Errors. 

In his writings his fame is assured. He was truly 
a " master-spirit," and, though in the books his " pre- 
cious life-blood is treasured up on purpose to a life be- 
yond life," yet the " Century " has a duty to perform in 
respect to his valued memory. 

I move you, that what has been said here to-night 
be printed in a permanent form by the Association, 
and circulated among the members, that others be 
stimulated to further acts of goodness and humanity, 
and that a record be thus preserved of a life so full of 
usefulness and true honor. 






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